Infrastructure, middleware, and applications for portable cellular devices in tactical edge networks

The tactical environment requires lightweight devices that are still sufficiently powerful to run a variety of applications to support dismounted soldiers. In the commercial market, competition and demand have driven the mobile phone platform to become a highly capable, programmable environment with devices that have excellent processing, storage, and display capabilities given their cost and size. The Android platform from Google has further increased access to these devices by providing an open source platform that can be programmed in Java and C++. This paper describes a set of middleware services designed to support tactical applications on Android devices, as well as improve communications capabilities from cellular devices. We also describe a candidate set of Android applications to support Tactical users.