Skip navigation

community

Up to Blog Posts in News

News

2 Posts tagged with the soldier tag
Cabe Atwell
0

Soldier prepares UAV for Afghanistan flight.png

Soldier sets up UAV communication system in Afganistan

 

Big bandwidth, 4G, wireless networks are popping up everywhere these days; it is almost hard to find an area that does not have a fast connection. That is not the case for our men and women fighting on foreign battlefields like Afghanistan. Wireless networks out there are hard to come by even at 3G speeds. Wars are won with information. Having soldiers connected is paramount.

 

Slow data speeds will soon be a problem of the past though as DARPA’s (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) STO (Strategic Technology Office) looks to bring 4G level connections to even the most remote of battlefields. To do this, DARPA plans on using their Mobile Hotspots program that uses a millimeter-wave communications platform (wavelength of 10 to 1mm.) This system will be implemented in air vehicles as well as ground and will be able to give the war-fighter the speed of a typical 4G fixed tower, which is about a gigabit per second, without the infrastructure (kind of hard to hide a cell-tower in a war zone). The Mobile Hotspots program will also utilize DARPA’s ‘Fixed Wireless at a Distance program' which is essentially a high-performance cell tower that’s placed in a protected area like a forward operating base (FOB). This work is being looked at to boost UAV transmission power in hopes to extend the range.

 

DARPA Program manager Dick Ridgway explained how they will get up and running, "Mobile Hotspots will require the development of steerable antennas, efficient millimeter-wave power amplifiers, and dynamic networking to establish and maintain the mobile data backhaul network. We anticipate using commercial radio protocols, such as WiFi, WiMax or LTE [Long Term Evolution], as a cost-effective demonstration of the high-capacity backbone.  However, the millimeter-wave mobile backbone developed during this program will be compatible with other military radios and protocols.”


 

"The principle of strategy is having one thing, to know ten thousand things." - Miyamoto Musashi (Book of Five Rings)

 

Cabe

http://twitter.com/Cabe_e14

244 Views 0 Comments Permalink Tags: wimax, embedded, communication, 4g, industry, aerospace, test, innovation, measurement, sensor, prototyping, military, defense, transportation, research, robot, energy, lte, robotics, darpa, soldier, cabeatwell
Cabe Atwell
0

biomask_concept.jpg

Biomask concept (via UT Arlington)

 

Being enlisted into the armed forces signs everyone up to a high risk of injury. Face damage is one of the most debilitating injury, and special care has to be taken. Soldiers that are injured in the face now may have the option to bypasses surgery and use a Biomask to repair their wounds.

 

Currently, the procedure to repair the face involves removing the damaged areas and grafting in new skin. With this procedure, you run the risk of having deformities, speech problems and scarring. The Biomask does not involve going under the knife but by just wearing a mask. The mask speeds up the healing process of disfiguring facial burns and helps rebuild the face.

 

It is a polymer mask that has electrical, mechanical and biological components built right in that allows the magic to happen.  Actuators press the mask to the patient's face. Onboard arrays of sensors give feedback on the healing process as well as a guideline on how to handle certain areas. "Localized activation of treatment" can be administered as the system decides. A network of "micro-tubing" administers antibiotics, pain killers, and stem cells (for rapid re-growth) onto specific areas of the face. Although the mask gives 24/7 healing, no specific time-table was set for the average repair time.

 

The criticality of developing a medical device runs deeper than any other. There were many heads being joined together to make sure it is not only effective but safe as well.  The head commander of this project is Eileen Moss who is an electrical engineer and research scientist at UT Arlington Automation & Robotics Research Institute. Her partners consist of the Army Institute of Surgical Research at the Brooke Army Medical Center and Northwestern University.

 

The Biomask was funded by a research grant from the U.S. Army Medical Research & Materiel Command of $700,000. Not a lot to ask for just a revolutionary healing system.

Northwestern University is hard at work studying the wound healing while UT Arlington team is focused on the developing the Biomask prototypes. The prototypes are going to be tested on other collaborators first so that Moss can use the results to the best of its abilities to improve the mask before being fully released. The goal is to get the Biomask assessable to our soldiers within 5 years.

 

Cabe

http://twitter.com/Cabe_e14

90 Views 0 Comments Permalink Tags: medical, innovation, prototyping, military, defense, university, research, medtronic, hmi, medical_portable, on_campus, soldier, technology_for_the_disabled, cabeatwell