Hypercast Implementation for PTDS

The convergence of current and emerging technologies presents the opportunity to
provide innovative, intelligently tailored role-based communication architectures
allowing information exchange between personnel, sensors, and databases. This is driven
in large part by the evolution of the Internet, the continuing commoditization of highly
portable computing devices (laptops and PDAs), and growing industry support of open
source software and standards (SOA, XML, UDDI, etc.). This has and continues to
enable the creation of complex and highly customizable systems utilizing inexpensive
components. These changes, coupled with advances in wireless communication and Peerto-
Peer (P2P) technologies, provide a foundation for the development of a flexible,
reconfigurable, and relatively low-cost infrastructure to support information exchange in
rapidly changing environments.

In this document we present the UVA efforts towards the development of the Persistent
Threat Detection System (PTDS) according to the requirements in the document
“Statement of Work (SOW) for Hypercast Implementation for PTDS” (See Appendix).
The discussion of UVA efforts includes the concept of operation and architecture to
enable dynamic and flexible information acquisition and sharing among all participants,
as well as the development of a prototype system that facilitates the construction of
information sharing groups over a heterogeneous network environment based on user
selected variables, such as rank, job, geographic location, etc.

The proposed concept of operation addresses the challenge of how to develop a dynamic
system for creating and managing the sharing of information among various units:
including sensor networks, databases, commanders, Tactical Operation Centers (TOC),
and CONUS personnel. In addition information exchange should not be hindered by
differences in facilities, equipment, protocols, or procedures of the parties involved.
To address these problems an information management architecture will be discussed
which addresses the information needs of disparate Army units in a way that transcends
their inherent organizational, procedural, and technical differences while allowing for
rapid adaptation to changing circumstances. Figure 1 shows the scenario of desired
information exchange.

The proposed architecture aims at achieving the following goals:

• Facilitate the creation and management of groups of users and information
  services to support the transparent sharing of information among those users with
  common information needs.
• Allow omni-directional information flow: recognizing that every actor in the
  system should be capable of serving as both a consumer as well as a provider of
  information to others.
• Permit the heterogeneous communication infrastructure to be rapidly deployed,
  expanded, and contracted as needed.
• Provide flexibly designed information services to meet the needs of users with
  dissimilar levels of technical skill, analytical capabilities, and requirements.