Biowarfare op  -  Sarine gas  -  Immediate exposure issue, no residuals.

 

What I was responsible for during the event:

All bullet items were successful unless otherwise noted.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tophat

Tophat was one of the devices deployed by the ECU Telemedicine Center.  Tophat was designed to answer the communications gap between environmental monitoring equipment, medical devices, and the specialists and decision makers who need the on site data without being there.  Tophat is a modular plug and play hot swappable system that uses commercial serial protocols as well as customized device driver programming to connect to a variety of input and output devices. Tophat demonstrated a flexible power system while using 120volt, 7.2volt 3-amp NiMh battery, automotive cigarette lighter, and solar.  The inputs that were used with Tophat during the exercise was the Welch Allyn Vital Signs Unit, Mindtel TNG-3b, Glucometer, MultiRae air and chemical detection system, and a GM-10 radiation detector.  Tophat transmitted data using serial, usb, infrared, bluetooth, 802.11b, and 10baseT Ethernet.  Tophat also displayed data using it’s own built in web server, a Handspring Visor (or any other Palm OS device), a Compaq Ipaq, and Apache web servers that Tophat posted data to.  Tophat was deployed to three locations and worn on one person during the exercise. 

 

The first location was at the location of the mock sarine gas attack, the schoolhouse.  While Tophat was on scene it monitored gas levels with a MultiRae air and chemical monitoring device, it also monitored location with a Magellan GPS 315, and radiation levels with a GM-10, simultaneously.  When radiation levels exceeded preset thresholds with a radioactive sample, Tophat began transmitting it’s location and what it detected over the 802.11b network vita http.  When Tophat was out of 802.11b range and was unable to send data using its network connection, Tophat automatically switched communications to the cellular phone that was also attached and successfully posted it’s data to a Cobalt Qube web server running Perl 5 and Apache.  The Perl script that accepted the data then notified a predefined list of people as a response to the data that was posted.  While Tophat was deployed a 7.2v 3-amp battery and a Suncatcher solar panel system powered it separately, and in conjunction providing a long term power solution.  ECU Telemedicine wrote all of the client and server software.

 

The second location was at the ECU Telemedicine Center’s forward deployed base, the building referred to as the U.S. Embassy.  This was our primary location for telemedicine reach back to ECU.  The vital statistics were taken off of an 11-year-old girl using a Welch Allyn Vital Signs Monitor.  Tophat controlled the monitor, and took the vital statistics from it, and used it’s built in web server functionality to transmit the data to the ECU bridge and a network operations center at Rochester simultaneously.  The patient data was also posted to a Cold Fusion server that was written by ECU Telemedicine.  Both Tophat and the Welch Allyn Vital Signs unit were running off of battery at the time.  Although the system was using an Ethernet cable at the time, the entire system could have been switched over to the 802.11b network and relocated to the field without being turned off or loosing network connectivity.

 

The third location was the ECU Telemedicine van.  Tophat was demonstrated in two areas here working both inside and outside the car.  Tophat was able to wirelessly talk to devices that were located outside of the car using Connectblue Bluetooth Serial Adapters.  This kept Tophat inside the car, and the sensors outside.  Tophat was also able to work outside of the car with the sensors directly, with a wireless connection back to a Handspring Visor inside the car.

 

Tophat was also used as a wearable, broadcasting live data for anyone with a network connection to view.  Tophat displayed GPS data, radiation levels, and toxic gas levels on a web page that it hosted.  When radioactive thresholds were breached Tophat posted data to another web server while running it’s own web server and sent out emails at the same time.  When the 802.11b network connection to Tophat was disconnected, Tophat continued to post radioactive data readings through a Globalstar Qualcomm GSP-1600 satellite phone.  Tophat ran off of a 7.2v 3-amp battery, and powered the radiation detector at the same time.  The Multirae, 802.11b network interface and the GSP-1600 were self powered, but could have been powered off of the Tophat 7.2 volt 3-amp power supply.  The interface for Tophat was a Handspring Visor connected to Tophat through Tophat’s data port.  The Handspring Visor was running a Palm OS program that was able to configure Tophat’s alarm thresholds, network settings, and view data from the devices attached to Tophat.

Tophat                                                                                   Tophat with compatible devices

 

Charmed

ECU Telemedicine deployed a wearable computer system built by the company Charmed.  The wearable was a Pentium 2 233 processor, 20 gig hard disk, 128 meg of ram, 2 PCMCIA card slots, with on board Ethernet and USB.  ECU Telemedicine setup the wearable to use a Cisco Aironet 340 series 802.11b wireless card.  The wireless card worked seamlessly with the multiple 802.11b access points and vendors that were on site.  The Charmed device was also outfitted with a USB Quickcam VC webcam and a Polycom ViaVideo.  The ViaVideo provided audio I/O and a high quality video codec, but required additional power.  The USB Quickcam didn’t require additional power making it a more suitable wearable camera.  The wearable was running Netmeeting and was set to auto answer.  Netmeeting is using H.323 and is compliant with programs running on the Macintosh and Windows operating systems.  The wearable was accessible on the wired and wireless LAN that ECU setup, and was accessible from outside the LAN through the GCS satellite system.  The serial port of the wearable was attached to a Mindtel TNG-3b streaming analog and digital sensor data back to another machine on the LAN using Neattools.

 

802.11B Network

The connection between the wireless deployed sensors on the ground, the forward deployed teams that needed wireless data transmission, and the reach back to the internet was provided with ECU Telemedicine and GCS’s onsite 802.11b network.  Both groups provided wireless systems that were able broadcast in conjunction with each other without causing interference, and between them, covered the entire MOUT with 802.11b network.  The 802.11b high gain antenna used by ECU Telemedicine was able to provide long-range line of site along the same horizontal plane.  The lower gain GCS antenna did not provide as much line of sight distance, but performed better in the scenario with a higher vertical range of coverage.  The GCS antenna was able to broadcast over buildings, while the ECU Telemedicine Tektronic’s antenna’s limited broadcast angle of plus or minus 13 degrees couldn’t reach over or around buildings.  Despite the difference in gain, the GCS Lucent antenna worked out much better in the urban environment.

 

802.11b can be setup in minutes and anywhere.  ECU’s setup time for the 802.11b network was 4 minutes (the time it took to move the antenna to the desired location and run the cable).  The 802.11b wireless network can be privatized or connected to the rest of the Internet.  It provides a layer for tcp/ip communications and can be scaleable and routable.  Security can be implemented on hardware, software, and application layers.  The broadcast range of 802.11b is increasing every day; with a broadcast range currently being tested by other groups up to 15 miles.

 

ECU Telemedicine was able to use the 802.11b networks to wireless bridge other buildings outside of the base station to it’s own network for communication and reach back.  This was also demonstrated in the Onslow county’s mobile command and control response truck <MCTIFFER?>.  Bridging these buildings and command vehicles not only establishes a common data network for sharing information, but also provides an ability to talk and see each other using commercial voice over ip and videoconferencing applications.  Hotzones could stay physically isolated but still have data and voice connectivity using the 802.11b network that ECU setup.

 

Both networks were able to get to the web using their own non-interfering reach back, and were able to be connected to use the same reach back system, the GCS satellite dish.  This allows for redundancy in case one system fails.  The deployed 802.11b system could have also been tied into the LNMARSAT terminal.

 

Lan 1 was our forward deployed sensors and wearables

Lan 2 was our wireless bridged remote teams and vehicles

Lan 3 was our base LAN and reach back

 

 

Alternative Powering

ECU Telemedicine demonstrated its ability to deploy mobile solutions with unconventional power systems with rechargeable battery packs and solar panel systems.  802.11b wireless access points were integrated with solar panels and rechargeable battery systems to provide 802.11 bridging throughout the day and night.  The solar panel system tested was a commercial off the shelf panel, the Suncatcher Expedition.  The battery packs were 7.2 volt 3-amp NiMh batteries available at any electronics store.  All of our devices were designed to use the same commercially available power connectors.  Having a high fault redundancy demands not requiring unique plugs and power supplies.  Keeping the power supplies for our devices interchangeable allows us to keep a minimal effort in the normally time consuming field of power management.

Example solar panel from PowerQuest

 

 

Lifepack 12 to Compaq Ipaq via Bluetooth

While working with the Onslow County EMS teams, ECU Telemedicine was asked if they could find a way to use the Internet to telemeter ECG data from their standard field deployed lifepack 12 system.  The lifepack 12 is capable of using a modem, or a direct serial connection, but was not able to send recorded ECG samplings across the internet.  We were able to use a bluetooth adapter from Connectblue to interface the Lifepack 12 with a Compaq Ipaq with bluetooth ability.  The files could be transmitted from the lifepack to the Ipaq, using email, ftp, or web based upload, to multiple recipients anywhere else in the world.  This was an example of the on site communications that we were able to implement on the fly once we were there.  No prior work had been done in this area prior to our arrival.  We were able to create communication with inbetween the lifepack 12 and the ipaq, and we were able to send the data files to PhysioControl specialists.  We were not able to view the samplings with the software we had on site, but PhysioControl was able to view them at their location.

 

ßBluetoothàßinternetà

 

Satellite Setup

ECU Telemedicine deployed two different forms of satellite reach back systems, Starband and Globalstar.  The Starband system is a 35 pound satellite dish that can be dropped anywhere within the continental United States and aligned southward for a point to point connection with Telstar 7 to establish a sharable internet connection.  The gateway for the Starband dish is a desktop or laptop pc with two network cards or one network card and a free usb slot.  It took 2 hours and 10 minutes to setup the satellite dish and the gateway.  Once this connection was up, we were able to tie in the already setup wireless networks through a hub, and share the network connection.  The average through put of the system was 70k down, and 35k up.

 

The Globalstar system is a collection of LEOS (Low Earth Orbit Satellites) that can talk to satphones roughly the same size and power requirements of a commercial cellular phone.  In our tests we used the Qualcomm GSP-1600 and a Motorola Iridium 9500.  We used the GSP-1600 as our primary voice system and as a reachback system for field deployed Tophats.  The data interface is a rs-232 serial cable to special a pin out on the GSP-1600.   The GSP-1600 was hot swappable between Tophat and laptops that were on the scene. There was no setup time with the GSP-1600, it was truly plug and play with our devices.  We were able to use the GSP-1600 to host web pages, and access the internet, with an average connectivity of 4k/second and dial up time of forty seconds. 

 

Left: Diagram of the starband network running to our 802.11b network.

Right: GSP-1600 phone used for Tophat reachback.