Employing IP-Based Technologies for Pervasive Connectivity and Interoperability

Despite increasing advancement in communications towards IP-based systems in the battlefield, communications and networks in the future will continue to be developed over a spectrum of frequencies to cater for customized and specialized forces due to range, power and environment differences. What this means to the strategic and operational users is that they would require a multitude of radios in order for them to effectively integrate mission plans across a joint task force comprising air, sea, Intel and land elements. Operational users, in particular, would have to grapple with multiple End User Terminals (EUT) for interaction with tactical forces and there is also no assurance that the intended party could be reached on the correct EUT. In end 2006, the Future Systems Directorate of the Ministry of Defence, Singapore, together with the Defence Science and Technology Agency (DSTA) and Singapore Technologies Electronics (STEE), conducted an experiment, codename ICONA or Intelligent Connect Anywhere, to validate an innovative IP-based unified communication system (UCS) that integrates and converges disparate military communication services (Radio, Telephony, Text, Video), to facilitate pervasive battlefield connectivity and presence-awareness amongst the forces. The UCS utilizes IP-based technologies such as Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) and Voice-over-IP (VoIP) as the common protocols to bridge disparate end communications systems. In the experiment, end users are able to use a common application running on a command and control (C2) terminal to reach intended users on a radio, analogue telephony or instant messaging with the click of a single button.