Causing Pain: The traditional edge intelligence computing model doesn’t work for edge Military wearable and IOBT devices. Transmission of large amounts of sensor data over potentially unreliable communications channels puts Battlefield soldiers at risk. Problem Statement: How DOD can manage the military battlefield assets to include integrate signals from a diverse and dynamic set of sensors, including static ground sensors and soldiers worn sensors to provide predictive and operational analytics? SAIC’s Virtual Tactical Assistance provides the DOD the IOT infrastructure to manage military battlefield assets to include integrating signals and communications protocols from a diverse and dynamic set of sensors, including stat ground sensors and soldier worn sensors to provide Distributed compute resources and predictive and operational analytics. Combatant personnel require the ability to use data from many systems and communicate peer to peer without access to significant IT infrastructure. The technology seeks to enhance asset management, supply and maintenance operations, rapid target acquisition, and the sharing of targeting/ballistic solutions. Sensors and other weapon mountable accessories/enablers are designed to capture logistic, targeting, and telemetry data from individual weapon systems and share it across the squad, platoon, and higher echelons via a decentralized network. Confluent/Kafka provides processing of IOBT data streams, such as device and sensor data, which provides insights into asset state by monitoring use, providing indicators, tracking patterns and optimizing asset use for proactive and predictive analytics. More importantly, Confluent kafka provides each TVA to function as a data hub and a peer in a “data mesh”, which can share messages, location updates, and other data with other TVA devices in an ad-hoc manner independent of any wider network.

1. SAIC at the
Tactical Edge
Jubal Biggs
Oct 02 2022
www.saic.com/iobt

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IoT Architecture
2
Data generation at the tactical edge is increasing
with the proliferation of small IoT and Edge devices.
A way for users to utilize this data on the Edge is
required.SAIC has developed a suite of capabilities
based on emerging IoT technologies.
Classic IoT Architecture employs an edge-compute
enabled gateway as an intermediary between
distributed sensors and “things” and the cloud. Key
to this architecture is a pub-sub enabled data bus.
Gateways can treat one another as sensors,enabling a
data mesh.
The SAICTacticalVirtual Assistant (TVA) is a flexible, context-aware, hands-free interface
system that can pull data from many sensors, control other systems, maintain a data mesh,
and host a variety of services from legacy applications to AI/ML on body wearable edge
compute hardware.

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SAIC PROPRIETARY INFORMATION I © SAIC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED I
THE SAIC CLOUDSCEND “EDGE” ECOSYSTEM
DATA
INGESTION AND
CONSUMPTION
INTELLIGENT
INSIGHT
DATA
DELIVERY
DATA
TRANSFORMATION
MANAGEMENT
AND
OPERATIONS
BUSINESS
OUTCOMES
CLOUDSCEND
“EDGE”
ECOSYSTEM
DATA INGESTION AND CONSUMPTION
Internet of Things (IOT)
Devices and sensors
Compute
INTELLIGENT INSIGHT
Data transformation
Artificial intelligence, applications
Real-time situational awareness
DATA DELIVERY
Secure networking
Software defined networks
Virtual network functions
DATA TRANSFORMATION
Edge automation
Performance measurement reporting
IT/OT device management
MANAGEMENT AND OPERATIONS
Edge automation
Performance measurement reporting
IT/OT device management
Alerts
BUSINESS OUTCOMES
Deep data analytics
Dashboards
Reporting

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SAIC PROPRIETARY INFORMATION I © SAIC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED I
TacticalVirtual Assistant
Wearable Edge Compute
consumes between
10W and 25W
• Scalable,Modular Compute
• Modular Design
• Support for all types of virtualization
• Integrated peer to peer data transport
over Lora
The modern tactical environment requires the ability to be “edge-
centric” instead of “net-centric”.This means more reliance on edge
compute and less reliance on network resources.
TheTacticalVirtual Assistant provides edge
compute hosting on the body in any
environment, data transport,data storage,
and hosts services for any end user device
(EUD). It is a hub for many sensors and a
peer node in a tactical data mesh.TVA
provides an interface for sensors, drones,
robots, and other “things” on the tactical
Edge.

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5
SATCOM
HF
SD-WAN
WAN
RF
Lora
ISW
Mesh
MANET
LAN
USB
UWB
(ISW)
IoT
Gateway
PAN
Network layers function as a hierarchy
from the personal area network (PAN)
upwards
TheTVA can function as a headless server
pulling data from many devices and providing
an output to AR or conventional end-user
devices (EUDs).

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AR HUD

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IoT For DoD (Army Dismount example)
Prioritization of data is key
What topics to push, what to save locally
Retain data for physical transport to better network later
Only move what is immediately important
Every dismount is a gateway with many local sensors
7
Gateway: Peer mesh network
LoraWAN LPI/LPD .5 Mi Limited
data
Gateway + Aggregation Point:
Aggregation for LoraWAN network
+ high bandwidth radio
T
“Things”: watch, weapon sensor,
biometric sensors, robots, UGVs…
Data architecture and data transport must be
tailored as one, holistic solution.

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8
Sensor A Sensor B Sensor X
MQTT
Confluent Platform (Single Broker)
Confluent Platform deployed on a Raspberry Pi
and leveraging Cluster Linking to publish sensor
data to Command Post in a DDIL environment.
Command Post running Confluent
Platform aggregating information
from Squires and other sensor data
Weather
Personnel
Logistics
Targets Sensor data published
to Command Post when
connected to network
Enhanced Situational
Awareness
Internet of Battlefield Things (IoBT) with Confluent

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1. LoRa
2. web sockets / grpc
3.Wi-fi
4. LAN
true picture of squires connected to each other
description of Lora Broadcast as redundant
network
Squire Driven Mesh Network & PAN

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IoBT COP

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GATHER, RECEIVE, AND PROCESS
MULTI-DOMAIN,
MISSION-CRITICAL
INFORMATION FASTER
AND HOLISTICALLY