Networking First Responders With the Wave Relay? MANET

By Isabella Szklany

Improving situational awareness with an emergency first-responder customer.

In May 2024, 200 first responders, 50 marines, emergency medical personnel, and emergency rescue responders converged at a rail tunnel for a subterranean environment test. This exercise aimed to successfully examine the department’s emergency response in subterranean environments and transmit video feeds from inside the tunnel to the team outside.

Emergency responders need to be prepared for the unexpected, and they need a reliable solution that they can trust to get the job done.

The Problem

In the past, this emergency department would send one of their personnel into the environment to scout the location. However, this person would not know what they would encounter and would be at increased risk of harm. As robotic systems improved, the department sought help from Boston Dynamics? , the world leader in mobile quadruped robots. Equipped with a Quadruped Unmanned Ground Vehicle (QUGV) robot, Spot? , for intelligence gathering, this customer still struggled to create a reliable network connection to keep their teams connected in subterranean environments. Thus, they needed a strong network connection to successfully route information regardless of the environment’s RF congestion and complexity. This is when the department turned to Persistent Systems, LLC (“Persistent”), an official business partner of Boston Dynamics, to provide a strong network connection to Spot with its Wave Relay mobile ad hoc networking (MANET) technology. As partners, Persistent Systems and Boston Dynamics work with their customers to help them experience the full capabilities of a reliable MANET.

The Solution

To educate the first responders on properly integrating the MPU5 and the Wave Relay network with Spot, Persistent Systems deployed field engineers to the department’s annual training exercise. Once on site, the field engineers quickly analyzed the current network setup and identified some improvements, such as changing the positioning of the MPU5 on Spot and mounting it vertically for uninterrupted connectivity. Once the SpotCAM EMI, Spectrum Analyzer, and CBRNE sensor were properly connected to the MPU5, the team focused on configuring the network. The network set-up consisted of one MPU5 on Spot, a second MPU5 at the operations center, and one Integrated Sector Antenna positioned at the mouth of the tunnel with all the data passed seamlessly over RF.

The Results

Persistent Systems achieved results above and beyond what the customer thought was possible at this exercise. Successfully pulling clear video feeds from 2100 ft into the tunnel, “this exercise opened their eyes to what is possible with the MPU5,” said Sean Francis, Field Application Engineer at Persistent. With the safety of first responders a top priority, having a robot enter the situation first allows the operator and its team to remotely assess the area and formulate an effective response that minimizes operator risk.

Employing Spot as another team member has been an asset for this customer. With the power of the Wave Relay Network?, this collaboration has brought the vision of improved safety to fruition.

Persistent’s Future with the Department

In addition to optimizing the Spot network, Persistent introduced the first responders to additional solutions, such as our Radio over IP (RoIP) capability. RoIP connects an MPU5 to a tactical radio with a short cable and places the tactical radio onto the digital Wave Relay network to communicate across one data link. The strong network strength of the MPU5 makes RoIP an attractive solution for the customer as their current solution employs long ethernet cables running between Motorola radios. Setting up a network with physical cable connections is time-consuming, limits range, and interferes with maneuvering quickly. A much simpler solution is connecting an MPU5 to a Motorola radio through a RoIP cable so that everyone can access the Wave Relay network regardless of their radio. We are currently building a tailored RoIP solution to meet this customer’s needs.

Providing this customer with the full capabilities of the Wave Relay? network is an important step towards strengthening our relationship with the first responder community.

Read the case study and explore other case studies and articles at: https://www.persistentsystems.com/insights/