CASSIDIAN demonstrates the first truly secure Mobile IP Node

• Mobile IP Node guar­an­tees secure deliv­ery of crit­i­cal data for the first time ever in the his­to­ry of mobile wire­less comms.
• Pro­gramme will improve the abil­i­ty of mil­i­tary and emer­gency response ser­vices to communicate.
• Intel­li­gent sys­tem can manip­u­late file sizes to facil­i­tate mes­sage deliv­ery to main­tain opti­mum band­width utilisation.

14 Sep­tem­ber 2011 – Mobile IP (Inter­net Pro­to­col) Node is a research and tech­nol­o­gy pro­gramme from Cas­sid­i­an being demon­strat­ed at DSEi 2011 that will improve the abil­i­ty of mil­i­tary and emer­gency response ser­vices to com­mu­ni­cate using voice, data and video wide vari­ety of oper­a­tional sce­nar­ios includ­ing counter ter­ror or post-nat­ur­al disaster. 

Exist­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion tech­nol­o­gy employed by mil­i­tary and emer­gency ser­vices con­sists of radios that oper­ate using wire­less bear­ers over mul­ti­ple net­works. Dur­ing peak traf­fic times or in extreme weath­er con­di­tions these net­works can become con­gest­ed, restrict­ing the flow of traf­fic and imped­ing oper­a­tions. Mobile IP Node takes a holis­tic view of all routes from sender to audi­ence whilst con­sid­er­ing exter­nal con­di­tions, mes­sage file size, pri­or­i­ty, secu­ri­ty lev­el and phys­i­cal loca­tion. It then uses deci­sion engines to select the opti­mum route based on user defined para­me­ters. Mobile IP Node – as with any IP based wire­less bear­er — can be used from Sat­com to VHF down to HF radio. The Node itself does not have radio capa­bil­i­ty built-in but opti­mis­es and main­tains a wire­less net­work seam­less­ly with­out tech­ni­cal intervention. 

Users can be con­fi­dent that a mes­sage will reach its intend­ed audi­ence regard­less of the sce­nario. In the case of stream­ing video or oth­er mes­sages that use large vol­umes of band­width, file size can be down­scaled auto­mat­i­cal­ly or man­u­al­ly to guar­an­tee mes­sage deliv­ery for the first time in the his­to­ry of secure wire­less com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Based on net­work qual­i­ty, the solu­tion can drop file size fur­ther by send­ing still images or just audio. Once net­work qual­i­ty improves, the mes­sage can be fur­ther opti­mised to return it to a larg­er size, to yield bet­ter qual­i­ty information. 

The cur­rent ver­sion of Mobile IP Node is housed in a case rough­ly the size of a box of cere­al mea­sures 90 x 320 x 200 mm, and is tru­ly mobile in com­par­i­son to pre­vi­ous offer­ings in the mar­ket. Being com­plete­ly wire-less the device will eas­i­ly fit one into a vehi­cle, open­ing up pos­si­bil­i­ties such as a vir­tu­al black box – allow­ing air­craft to send flight data to a remote hub for 

stor­age, or send­ing and receiv­ing new or updat­ed mis­sion data whilst vehi­cles are in tran­sit. The next ver­sion is the size of a stan­dard hard­back book and weighs 1.3 kg open­ing the poten­tial for fur­ther capabilities. 

Cyber secu­ri­ty is now essen­tial for the mod­ern mil­i­tary and emer­gency response ser­vices solu­tion, so Mobile IP Node incor­po­rates a vari­ant of the most up to date encryp­tion tech­nol­o­gy as a pro­gram­ma­ble secu­ri­ty lay­er that allows the user to tai­lor the com­plex­i­ty of encryp­tion based on their requirements. 

Dr Mark Ben­tall, CTO of Cas­sid­i­an com­ment­ed: “The strength of Mobile IP Node is that it com­bines net­work mobil­i­ty, secu­ri­ty and qual­i­ty of ser­vice deliv­ery in a high­ly inte­grat­ed func­tion­al pack­age. We have designed it to remove com­plex­i­ty from the user and reduce the need for com­mu­ni­ca­tion plan­ning. A Mobile IP Node based sys­tem can pro­vide high lev­els of trust­ed com­mu­ni­ca­tions with­out the need for skilled oper­a­tors or users – they can sim­ply send a mes­sage and know that the sys­tem will effi­cient­ly deliv­er it. Users will have net­work access and band­width on demand whilst sup­port­ing com­mon IP based protocols.” 

About CASSIDIAN (www.cassidian.com)
Cas­sid­i­an, an EADS com­pa­ny, is a world­wide leader in glob­al secu­ri­ty solu­tions and sys­tems, pro­vid­ing Lead Sys­tems Inte­gra­tion and val­ue-added prod­ucts and ser­vices to civ­il and mil­i­tary cus­tomers around the globe: air sys­tems (air­craft and unmanned aer­i­al sys­tems), land, naval and joint sys­tems, intel­li­gence and sur­veil­lance, cyber secu­ri­ty, secure com­mu­ni­ca­tions, test sys­tems, mis­siles, ser­vices and sup­port solu­tions. In 2010, Cas­sid­i­an – with around 28,000 employ­ees – achieved rev­enues of € 5.9 bil­lion. EADS is a glob­al leader in aero­space, defence and relat­ed ser­vices. In 2010, the Group – com­pris­ing Air­bus, Astri­um, Cas­sid­i­an and Euro­copter – gen­er­at­ed rev­enues of € 45.8 bil­lion and employed a work­force of more than 121,000.

CASSIDIAN – Defend­ing World Security 

Con­tacts:
Deb­o­rah Wad­don
Tel.: +44 (0)1 633 715 447
Mob.: +44 79 19 69 64 43
deborah.waddon@cassidian.com

Sean Tre­gonning
Tel.: +44 (0)7796 190 083
sean.tregonning@cassidian.com

Cas­sid­i­an Press cen­tre:
http://www.cassidian.com/cassidian/int/en/press-centre.html