Results of FY 05 Army/HyperCast Research Efforts

The purpose of this document is to integrate the results of the University of Virginia’s (UVa) efforts on what we refer to as the Army HyperCast project. The overall purpose of the Army-funded effort is to explore the application of the HyperCast networking technology developed at UVa under an NSF grant, to the Army’s efforts to develop systems that employ Unattended Ground Sensors. The objectives in applying HyperCast are to create flexible mechanisms for information management and rapid system reconfiguration. HyperCast consists of a set of software-based protocols that support: 1) the ad hoc creation of information exchange groups that can support multicasting of information among the various memberships, 2) certain information security capabilities that support authentication and encryption in an ad hoc environment, 3) network and component monitoring and control capabilities that can support adaptive information exchange capabilities, such as varying information exchange rates and information compression rates as a function of communications congestion. One of the important features of HyperCast that cuts across all three of the above areas of interest, is that it enables information groups to operate on a variety of communications networks and by using communications gateways, transparently supports multicast exchanges that cross physical networks.