A Mobile Phone-Based Sensor Grid for Distributed Team Operations

In distributed warfare, warfighters operate in remote and austere environments with limited support from outside. In such situations, each team has to take care of its own safety and security. For operations that last over several days, even the most highly trained teams are vulnerable to fatigue, leading to a loss of focus during long periods of boring activities such as night watch. This can lead to mission failure and loss of life. We have developed a mobilephone based system to help with the team’s safety by providing real-time situational awareness to the team of its surroundings. We have built a sensor grid around the team by networking several mobile phones using Bluetooth and using their built-in components such as accelerometers to capture seismic signals and microphone to capture sound in the area. When the grid is breached by a human, animal or machine, the individual phones capture signals generated by the intruders’ movements. These signals are then compiled and analyzed to calculate the position of the intruder and alert the team about its presence. In implementing this system, our goals were to minimize the additional weight to warfighter’s gear, run the system on as low power as possible, and to make it easy to install and use the system.