NATO – Programme LELANTOS
Next Generation Communications for Ad Hoc Command Posts
Challenge
The challenge was to provide NATO’s Allied Rapid Reaction Corps (ARRC) with a next-generation Command Post featuring innovative solutions to resolve many existing restrictions associated with the contemporary operating environment.
‘Programme LELANTOS’ was an experimental project aiming to provide the ARRC with a more agile command and control solution, with an emphasis on survivability and modularity, while being designed to be scalable to accommodate more than 500 connected personnel. Key improvements were to include increased power supply efficiency and sustainability, low radio spectrum visibility and a secure communications network that required less manual setup and took advantage of disparate local, terrestrial and satellite networks.
Partners
UniVirtua combined with the following industry partners in the delivery of Programme LELANTOS:
Solution
UniVirtua integrated an early iteration of dashAlpha into the LELANTOS network environment; our objective was to deliver a PACE (Primary, Alternate, Contingency, Emergency) solution capable of supporting true network bonding across a multitude of disparate bearers (WiFi, LiFi, private LTE and Free Space Optics) as well as an elective degradation of networking capability.
Elective degradation is especially relevant in hostile operating environments, where an RF signal can be detected, eavesdropped upon, jammed or targeted by enemy weapons systems.
Outcome
UniVirtua demonstrated dashAlpha’s ability to mitigate the effects of signal detection and attack. dashAlpha proved the capability to bond WiFi (2.4GHz and 5GHz) and LiFi bearers into a single high-capacity network connection, whilst also being able to gracefully fall back to LiFi in the event of the WiFi bearers needing to be deactivated, preserving internal Command Post connectivity while minimising RF footprint.