320 MPU5 radios, spread across 37 multi-story buildings including basement levels

Persistent Systems, exhibiting at XPONENTIAL on booth #1404 announced on 23 April that its MPU5 smart radio could scale up to a 320-node mobile ad hoc network (MANET) at a military operation urban training facility, at Ft. Bragg, NC/USA.

The MPU5 runs the WAVE RELAY MANET routing protocol, allowing the radio to transmit and relay secure voice, video, text, and sensor data in a robust, peer-to-peer fashion—all without external communications infrastructure. This is a capability that the U.S. Army has been looking for with its Brigade Combat Teams. “The Army wants a MANET that can scale up to 250 mobile radios in a flat, layer-2 network,” Herbert Rubens, Founder and CEO of Persistent Systems, said. “However, such a network would exceed the capability of most other solutions currently available.”

Persistent Systems’ WAVE RELAY was designed to achieve extremely high levels of scalability without any limitation on the number of nodes or routing hops permitted in the network.

In the Fort Bragg demonstration, 320 MPU5 radios, spread across 37 multi-story buildings including basement levels, communicated successfully on a single RF channel. “Let’s be clear: A flat MANET network of this size has never been demonstrated by any other organisation,” Mr. Rubens continued. “We not only proved that it is possible to scale up to a 320-node, flat, layer-2 network, but that it works, and it works well.”

During the demonstration, the MPU5 tethered with Samsung Galaxy S7 phones, reported their GPS locations, to provide situational awareness in both ATAK and WinTAK; connected a video camera on a Polaris DAGOR lightweight tactical vehicle, streamed more than 2Mbps of multicast video over the network; and used its Radio over IP (RoIP) capability to tether multiple legacy land mobile radios into the network, allowing dismounts to speak on Tactical Satellite while carrying only an MPU5 and the Persistent Systems Dual PTT Device.

The load on the network was representative of an extremely large team running voice, video, and situational awareness. Yet despite the load on the network, the MANET still had additional capacity to spare. “Persistent Systems has a reputation for advancing the state-of-the-art in scalable MANET technology,” the industry expert concluded. “And we have proven that the MPU5 can deliver a tactical MANET network that scales beyond the Army’s requirements.”

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