A multinational standard based approach for filtered information distribution in a mobile environment

In operational settings, where nations collaborate within an overall mission and multiple assets are used to gather information in an area of interest, the timely distribution of relevant information to the relevant person is key. To enable current situation awareness relevant information needs to be provided in (near) real time. This information distribution is especially challenging in an environment, where organization units are spread out in the field. Those mobile units operate in environments with hardware limitations, network disconnections, bandwidth constraints, under mental pressure and in a challenging overall situation. Depending on the type of unit, the mission, the military organization and the specific task, the information needs and essentials are varying. Given the limitations described above, information gathered from other units thus needs to be tailored and prioritized to the need of the consuming unit within its specific mission. This paper deals with requirements, derived functions and technological approaches to deal with these challenges. Therefore, the paper first introduces a selection of scenarios of interest, where mobile units receive information from connected operational centers through dynamic multi-hop networks. For these scenarios we analyze the requirements for data dissemination considering the need for filtered and prioritized information for the individual task of the unit. To guarantee the interoperability of multinational deployments, these requirements must be compatible with the requirements of relevant multinational standards (STANAGs). Further derivable functions and resulting technological approaches will be topics for future work.