Page 51 - Australian Defence Magazine February 2022

FEBRUARY 2022 | WWW.AUSTRALIANDEFENCE.COM.AU
COMMAND & CONTROL 51
able and, because it works on the ‘black’ (unclassified) side of the network, encryption is performed within the tactical devices themselves.
Should a communications or data channel go down, or become overloaded due to demand, the user will not experi- ence a loss of service or restricted access
to data due to HIVE’s concept as an ‘over-
fires in eastern Australia, when emergency services from different states were often unable to communicate with one another, or with ADF personnel.
“We certainly have aspirations to explore the use of HIVE in solving some of the interagency interoperability issues that occur around radio networks, because the system can work in both data and data and voice. There are also many aspects of Smart Cities which could ben-
efit from HIVE,” Smith added.
Within the military market, Smith said
the company is engaging with industry primes to explore applications for the sys- tem across a range of programs and signif-
icant export potential exists, particularly among the ‘Five Eyes’ partners.
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
With HIVE about 18 months away from Defence’s security accreditation process, Insitec is now considering future de- velopments.
“We are looking to further engage with Army about the future direction of HIVE and some of the aspects we’re working on at the moment with the University of Melbourne are around co-operative spectrum sensing, electromagnetic- aware routing, identification of other assets, jammers and those sorts of things, to develop it into a really advanced sys- tem in the electromagnetic warfare space,” Smith explained.
HIVE is intended to work with existing battlefield tele- communications systems such as Boeing’s Currawong bat- tlespace communications system being delivered under JP2072 Phase 2B, in effect sitting between Currawong and the tactical networks.
“HIVE is a network and network overlay that leads to a data fabric that can connect all of the disparate networks and allows advanced application architectures for the ADF,” Smith summarised. ■
lay network of networks’.
DEVELOPMENT
Insitec has developed HIVE in collabora-
tion with the University of Melbourne,
using digital innovation process meth-
odology along the way. “When the C4
EDGE program began, we were EOS’ systems integration and ICT partner, so we did a lot of research and aligned our- selves with the University of Melbourne. We then conduct- ed a trade study to determine what represented the world- leading architecture to solve the problem, but we quickly learned there wasn’t really a solution for what was required by C4 EDGE,” explained Insitec’s General Manager of Mili- tary, Intelligence and Space Division Jarrod Smith.
“We did a lot of experimentation work with the university at the beginning of our architecture work, based on software- defined networking – building small software systems that we could test and evaluate – then we migrated to a much larger laboratory setting, where we have hundreds of virtual machines acting as radios in our own test bed. We basically created an architecture that’s based on software-defined networking and then re-cast that to build a land tactical overlay network.”
C4 EDGE TRIALS
The goal for HIVE during the C4 EDGE trials with Army was to deliver an integrated network, providing dynamic routing to create a resilient and seamless flow of informa- tion around the network.
Prior to the trial, conducted on the Majura Test Range, three stages of vehicle integration testing was completed as part of system development. The first involved physi- cal integration tests before HIVE was integrated into the vehicles themselves; the second included installation into the vehicles and testing them within the boundaries of the company’s test facility; and the third tested the system with the vehicles out on the road and moving around.
The testing at Majura comprised five vehicles and a number of representative dismounted soldiers, who ran through mul- tiple scenarios to explore the boundaries of the system. “We had no failures throughout the process of the actual trials and it was really great to see that all of the lead up work done in collaboration worked seamlessly on the day,” Smith added.
FURTHER APPLICATIONS
Outside the military battlegroup scenario, there would ap- pear to be other applications for HIVE in areas such as emergency management and Humanitarian Air and Disas- ter Relief (HADR) operations, where a timely means of con- necting disparate communications networks may mean the difference between life and death. A fairly recent example of this requirement occurred during the 2019-2020 bush-
“WE ARE LOOKING TO FURTHER ENGAGE WITH ARMY ABOUT THE FUTURE DIRECTION OF HIVE”
ABOVE LEFT: HIVE is intended to connect the Battlefield of Things (BoT) to enable rapid and secure networking of forces across the battlefield.
ABOVE: The HIVE system is designed to constantly monitor and optimise performance by using all the network capacity available.
INSITEC