Xponential 2024 military | Show report Harbour without us at least knowing about it,” says Mike Varney, director of international programs at ThayerMahan. Real-Time Innovations (RTI) discussed its new Observability tool for communication networks that enables developers to monitor network performance down to the health and behaviour of individual nodes on uncrewed vehicles, says Brian Senese, senior field applications engineer at RTI. RTI describes its Observability Framework as a tool for understanding the current and past state of applications, empowering developers to identify and resolve potential system issues. Based on the Data Distribution Service (DDS) standard, it enables secure, reliable, real-time information exchange over large and diverse networks, including Lockheed Martin’s Aegis naval combat system. DDS is the predominant standard for implementing mission-critical open architecture systems, enabling interoperability, portability, loose coupling and real-time quality of service assurance. RTI’s DDS solution offers broad support for programming languages, operating systems, processor architecture and network types, enabling it to integrate everything from sensors at the edge to track management in the cloud. “When you have a complete DDS system up and running, observability is essential,” Senese says. “You’ve got to understand if a node has gone down, or if there’s a bottleneck or data obstruction, or another issue in your network. You can detect issues before they become critical. “Additionally, RTI was key in developing the DDS specification for the DoD because they needed a resilient, transport-based technology to replace server-based naval systems. Observability was developed to collect telemetry and system health data available from DDS nodes by using a graphical dashboard, so information can be delivered intuitively.” As customers prioritise different information, the dashboard is customisable. One key parameter is ‘liveliness’, which Senese likens to a heartbeat. “Each node on the network generates a heartbeat once a second or every five seconds – it’s a configurable parameter – to let all the other nodes know it is there,” he says. The Observability tool detects this liveliness heartbeat and indicates whether a node is healthy. “If it’s unhealthy, you will get a red indicator on a timeline saying there has been a problem for this period of time, for example,” Senese adds. At the moment, the information is displayed graphically on a screen. “Somebody has to be paying attention,” Senese adds. 67 Uncrewed Systems Technology | August/September 2024 Ocius Technology’s Bluebottle sail- and solar-powered USVs can deploy a towed array sonar to increase its targetdetection range. The sail folds down (Image courtesy of Ocius Technology)
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