Year
2012
Abstract
The Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) was requested to lead a Law Enforcement Working Group that was formed to collaborate on common operational needs. All agencies represented on the working group ranked their need to tag, track, and locate a witting or unwitting target as their highest priority. Specifically, they were looking for technologies more robust than Global Positioning Satellite (GPS), could communicate back to the owner, and worked where normal cell phone communications did not work or were unreliable. SRNL brought together multiple technologies in a demonstration that was held in in various Alaska venues, including metropolitan, wilderness, and at-sea that met the working group’s requirements. Using prototypical technologies from Boeing, On Ramp, and Fortress, SRNL was able to demonstrate the ability to track personnel and material in all scenarios including indoors, in heavily wooden areas, canyons, and in parking garages. In all cases GPS signals were too weak to measure. Bi-directional communication was achieved in areas that Wi-Fi, cell towers, or traditional radios would not perform. The results of the exercise will be presented. These technologies are considered ideal for tracking high value material such has nuclear material with a platform that allows seamless tracking anywhere in the world, indoors or outdoors.