To save lives in a mass casualty event, decision makers need access to a wide range of information and analyses and they need direction on when and how to use that information. We have developed an integrated approach to support decision-making efforts within overwhelming CBRN events. The end product is called the Actionable Knowledge Report (AKR). This tool provides fused knowledge and analysis summaries focused on needs of specified end-users in a near-real time, web-based, multi-level secure, common operating picture environment. The AKR provides to decision makers a tool to meet their overall goal of preserving and saving lives by breaking down their efforts into two broad areas: minimizing casualties, and managing the unavoidable casualties. To do this effectively, a number of capabilities in each of these areas must be considered. To arrive at a solution, capabilities need to be connected into strategies to form a reasonable course of action (COA). To be successful, situational awareness must be maintained, and risks of implementation and sustainability of the execution must be taken into account. In addition, a CBRN situation can overwhelm the existing infrastructure and capabilities. This will place a large burden on the individuals, forcing them to explore alternative and non-conventional strategies. The AKR provides an interactive medium to develop and implement the best COA. Both the AKR and the underlying analytical process (including the incorporation of CBRN casualty and resource estimation tools) are described in this paper.

Network-centric force optimization is the problem of threat engagement and dynamic Weapon-Target Allocation (WTA) across the force. The goal is to allocate and schedule defensive weapon resources over a given period of time so as to achieve certain battle management objectives subject to resource and temporal constraints. The problem addresses in this paper is one of dynamic WTA and involves optimization across both resources (weapons) and time. We henceforth refer to this problem as the Weapon Allocation and Scheduling problem (WAS). This paper addresses and solves the WAS problem for two separate battle management objectives: (1) Threat Kill Maximization (TKM), and (2) Asset Survival Maximization (ASM). Henceforth, the WAS problems for the above objectives are referred to as the WAS-TKM and WAS-ASM, respectively. Both WAS problems are NP-complete problem and belong to a class of multiple-resource-constrained optimal scheduling problems. While the above objectives appear to be intuitively similar from a battle management perspective, the two optimal scheduling problems are quite different in their complexity. We present a hybrid genetic algorithm (GA) that is a combination of a traditional genetic algorithm and a simulated annealing-type algorithm for solving these problems. The hybrid GA approach proposed here uses a simulated annealing-type heuristics to compute the fitness of a GA-selected population. This step also optimizes the temporal dimension (scheduling) under resource and temporal constraints and is significantly different for the WAS-TKM and WAS-ASM problems. The proposed method provides schedules that are near optimal in short cycle times and have minimal perturbation from one cycle to the next.

Military systems in the new century are becoming increasingly complex, network centric, and information intensive. Existing ad-hoc test and evaluation (T&E) approaches are facing increasing challenges to cope with these complexities. An open, modular, standards-based embedded instrumentation (EI) architecture (OMEA) is proposed to leapfrog the capabilities of T&E. The OMEA embraces an 'all digital' solution and rapidly emerging commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware and software technologies. These technologies include smart sensor networks, time synchronization for sensor network, reconfigurable hardware, model-based design, and software defined radio. The OMEA architecture will rationalize the myriad of heterogeneous EI and control systems. It will normalize the EI interfaces enabling easier and more cost-effective system design, development, procurement, integration and testing. With the growth of digital control platforms, it is possible to design-in EI capabilities to sense and collect critical performance data without requiring additional sensors. Any military vendor or system integrator will be able to realize this 'controller is the instrument' vision by using the proposed OMEA architecture.

This paper describes an information-centric embedded instrumentation systems architecture (EISA) and in particular its technical reference model (TRM) as they relate to the network-centric Test and Training Enabling Architecture (TENA). The embedded instrumentation systems architecture is meant to describe the operational, behavioral and informational requirements for a general "embedded instrumentation test and evaluation system" encased within an operational weapons system. The weapons system application could be in a weapon round, or in an entire large platform such as a warfare fighting unit, battle group or single war-craft such as a ship, plane or tank. TENA and the EISA models have much in common as will be described. The differences lie in the focus of each model's intended application domain. Both are part of the military support communities for aiding the military in training, testing, evaluating, verification or validation of weapons systems.

The networked server defense model is focused on reliability and availability in security respects. The (remote) backup servers are hooked up by VPN (Virtual Private Network) with high-speed optical network and replace broken main severs immediately. The networked server can be represent as "machines" and then the system deals with main unreliable, spare, and auxiliary spare machine. During vacation periods, when the system performs a mandatory routine maintenance, auxiliary machines are being used for back-ups; the information on the system is naturally delayed. Analog of the N-policy to restrict the usage of auxiliary machines to some reasonable quantity. The results are demonstrated in the network architecture by using the stochastic optimization techniques.

The MITRE Corporation recently hosted the first Netted Sensors Community Workshop in McLean, Virginia, on 24 October - 26 October 2005. The Workshop was sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) Director of Defense Research and Engineering (DDR&E), and the National Science Foundation (NSF). The goal was to establish and sustain an annual Netted Sensors workshop that brings together Government, Industry and Academia to accelerate the development and transition of appropriate Netted Sensor technologies to solve real world problems. The workshop provided a forum focused on the application of netted sensing research and development (R&D) activities to solve existing and future Department of Defense (DoD), Intelligence Community (IC), Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and Environmental sensing problems. The Netted Sensors workshop brought together the Science and Technology (S&T) community, Industry, and Government / Military organizations to (1) share, discuss and disseminate new R&D results, (2) highlight new commercial products and technologies, and (3) identify and discuss nationally important sensing problems suitable for Netted Sensing solutions. This paper provides a summary of the presentations that were made at the workshop as well as recommendations for future workshops.

Several existing and potential future programs at the Defense Research Projects Agency (DARPA) are developing novel and highly sophisticated sensors. In order to make the most of these capabilities, the Department of Defense is developing means of distributing the information efficiently and sharing it with users who must make timely decisions. The goal is for the sensors to operate within network-centric architectures, which require high data bandwidths, flexibility and robustness. This paper does not deal with the communications between sensors, but rather the sensor technologies that fit within that framework. In particular, it describes imaging systems that exploit significantly different technologies such as speckle imaging, synthetic aperture ladar, and super-resolution. Techniques such as synthetic apertures are migrating between disciplines and it is important for developers in one field to be able to communicate effectively with those in other fields. The paper attempts to address issues in both the RF and optical disciplines, describing both the commonalties and differences.

The Powered Low Cost Autonomous Attack System (PLOCAAS) is an Air Force Research Laboratory Munitions Directorate Advanced Technology Demonstration (ATD) program. The PLOCAAS objective is to demonstrate a suite of technologies in an affordable miniature munition to autonomously search, detect, identify, attack and destroy ground mobile targets of military interest. PLOCAAS incorporates a solid state Laser Detection and Ranging (LADAR) seeker and Autonomous Target Acquisition (ATA) algorithms, miniature turbojet engine, multi-mode warhead, and an integrated INS/GPS into a 36" long, high lift-to-drag ratio airframe. Together, these technologies provide standoff beyond terminal defenses, wide area search capability, and high probability of target report with low false target attack rate with high loadouts. Four LADAR seeker captive flight tests provided the sequestered data for robust Air Force ATA algorithm performance assessment. During Part I of the ATD, three successful free-flight tests were completed in which the LADAR seeker and Autonomous Target Acquisition (ATA) algorithms have detected, acquired, identified, and tracked ground mobile targets. Part II of the ATD demonstrated the ability to redirect the munition post release via a commercial satellite datalink. In addition to summarizing all program accomplishments, this paper will present results and lessons learned from Part II of the ATD. Part II's objective was to demonstrate the military utility of a two- ay data-link. The data-link allows an Operator-In-The-Loop (OITL) to monitor and control multiple cooperative, wide-area-search munitions and enables these munitions to serve as non-traditional Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) assets in a networkcentric environment.

Project Oculus, an ongoing research platform for deploying airborne sensors on a C-130 aircraft, is currently in its pre-flight testing phase. The sensor platform is divided into two systems that rest on standard 463L pallets; a sensor deployment pallet and an operator station. The sensor pallet consists of a deployment arm and a pod, which can contain various sensors. The operator station houses power control equipment, data acquisition, and operators who control the sensors. Oculus is designed to fly on a C-130 aircraft, which has very high internal audible noise. Although Oculus' operator station contains noise-deadening material, a headset intercommunication system needs to be designed. This system must comply with different headset standards, communicate with the C-130 intercom, and be expandable to accommodate various audio sources like radios and satellites receivers. Throughout the years, intercom systems and headsets have evolved from the original standard consisting of an impedance rating of a speaker and a microphone. Early intercom systems were highly limited in functionality and quality due to simple electronics and common grounding. Advances in electronics allowed for the evolution of headset standards and intercom equipment, which permitted a multitude of new configurations and improved sound quality. With these advances, multiple headset standards and intercom interfaces have become popular among the military and civilian aviation. Due to the different standards for headsets, impedance matching plays a major role in the design of an intercom system. Oculus is a multi-mission platform and therefore must be designed to support a variety of standards including civilian and military headsets. This paper outlines the intercom units and parts considered for use in Oculus, and a design criteria for an extendable intercom system for Oculus.

A top level approach has been developed to provide the warfighter the confidence to understand the operational environment in the area of Space Operations, in particular Space Superiority and SSA (Space Situational Awareness) and determine a timely course of action. First, a review of the current objective and architecture for space operation is reviewed, including the general approach to the BMC³ environment. Next, a summary of the past and current information analysis paradigm is presented. This paradigm, along with most of the data collection (Sensors) infrastructure was developed to provide warning and status in an age of predicable threats. The evolving Space Picture contains more threat asymmetry both on the ground and in space. This shift suggests we look at both the decision maker's needs and our information processing in a new way. The second section of this paper explains the top down development of key metrics, based on the proven approach of operational risk management. To do this we chose a stressing scenario for Space Superiority, DCS (Defensive Counter Space) operating against Red's space based threat. A top level qualitative study highlights the need for timely development of Red's true intent without the normal apirori knowledge present when the current deployed sensor net and operational paradigm was developed. The possible answers to this change of approach and operational focus are key elements of a Network Centric Approach to the operational picture. These elements include rapid integration of MLS data sources, data fusion and sensor re-tasking. All these elements are under development in many places including Boeing; two key internal research efforts are included for consideration. Finally, this paradigm shift away from dependence on apirori knowledge to drive understanding, toward data fusion and inference, can and should be validated. Several options to do this and a framework for a near term integrated space based demonstration is discussed.

As the component technologies for unmanned aerial vehicles mature, increased attention is being paid to the problem of command and control. Many UAVs, even small lightweight versions, are seeing significant operational time as a result of the Iraq war, and consequently, users are becoming increasingly proficient with the platform technologies and are considering new and more elaborate tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs), as well as concepts of operations (CONOPS), for their use, both individually and in teams. This paper presents one such concept and summarizes the progress made toward that goal in a recent research program. In particularly, the means by which a team of UAVs can be considered a tactical information resource is investigated, and initial experimental results are summarized.

The Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) has an ongoing investigation to evaluate the behavior of Small Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (SAVs) and Micro Aerial Vehicles (MAVs) flying through an urban setting. This research is being conducted through the Cooperative Operations in UrbaN TERrain (COUNTER) 6.2 research and flight demonstration program. COUNTER is a theoretical and experimental program to develop the technology needed to integrate a single SAV, four MAVs, and a human operator for persistent intelligence, reconnaissance and surveillance for obscured targets in an urban environment. The research involves development of six-degree-of-freedom models for integration into simulations, modeling and integration of wind data for complex urban flows, cooperative control task assignment and path planning algorithms, video tracking and obstacle avoidance algorithms, and an Operator Vehicle Interface (OVI) system. The COUNTER concept and the contributing technologies will be proven via a series of flight tests and system demonstrations. The first of six planned COUNTER flight demonstrations occurred in July of 2005. This demonstration focused on the simultaneous flight operations of both the SAV and the MAV while displaying their respective telemetry data on a common ground station (OVI). Current efforts are focused on developing the architecture for the Cooperative Control Algorithm. In FY 2006, the COUNTER program will demonstrate the ability to pass vehicle waypoints from the OVI station to the SAV and MAV vehicles. In FY 2007, COUNTER will focus on solutions to the optical target tracking (SAV) and obstacle avoidance (MAV) issues.

This paper describes a decentralized low communication approach to multi-platform sensor management. The method is based on a physicomimetic relaxation to a joint information theoretic optimization, which inherits the benefits of information theoretic scheduling while maintaining tractability. The method uses only limited message passing, only neighboring nodes communicate, and each node makes its own sensor management decisions. We show by simulation that the method allows a network of sensor nodes to automatically self organize and perform a global task. In the model problem, a group of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) hover above a ground surveillance region. An initially unknown number of moving ground targets inhabit the region. Each UAV is capable of making noisy measurements of the patch of ground directly below, which provide evidence as to the presence or absence of targets in that sub-region. The goal of the network is to determine the number of targets and their individual states (positions and velocities) in the entire surveillance region through repeated interrogation by the individual nodes. As the individual nodes can only see a small portion of the ground, they must move in a manner that is both responsive to measurements and coordinated with other nodes.

Self localization is a term used to describe the ability of a network to automatically determine the location of its nodes, given little or no external information. Self localization is an enabling technology for many future capabilities; specifically those that rely on a large number of sensors that self organize to form a coherent system. Most prior work in this area focuses on centralized computation with stationary nodes and synchronized clocks. We report on preliminary results for a setting that is more general in three ways. First, nodes in the network are moving. This implies the pair-wise distances between nodes are not fixed and therefore an iterative tracking procedure is needed to estimate the time varying node positions. Second, we do not assume synchronization between clocks on different nodes. In fact, we allow the clocks to have both an unknown offset and to be running at differing rates (i.e., a drift). Third, our method is decentralized, so there is no need for a single entity withfaccess to all measurements. In this setup, each node in the network is responsible for estimating its state. The method is based on repeated pair-wise communication between nodes. We focus on two types of observables in this paper. First, we use the time between when a message was sent from one node and when it was received by another node. In the case of synchronized clocks and stationary nodes, this observable provides information about the distance between the nodes. In the more general case with non-synchronized clocks, this observable is coupled to the clock offsets and drifts as well as the distance between nodes. Second, we use the Doppler stretch observed by the receiving node. In the case of synchronized clocks, this observable provides information about the line of sight velocity between the nodes. In the case of non-synchronized clocks, this observable is coupled to the clock drift as well as the line of sight velocity. We develop a sophisticated mathematical representation that allows all of these effects to be accounted for simultaneously. We approach the problem from a Bayesian viewpoint, where measurements are accumulated over time and used to form a probability density on the state, conditioned on the measurements. What results is a recursive filtering (or tracking) algorithm that optimally merges the measurements. We show by simulation and illustrative data collections that our method provides an efficient decentralized method for determining the location of a collection of moving nodes.

This paper describes a service-oriented architecture for network-centric operations that supports Reliable Service Discovery (RSD). We analyze several complementary mechanisms for improving the reliability of the service discovery process. These include distributed service registries with replication of registry entries, periodic revalidation of registry data with propagation of registry updates, and adaptive reconfiguration of the registry topology in response to changes in network membership and connectivity. We derive properties for each of these mechanisms that lead to optimal performance in the resourceconstrained environments typical of mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs). We then outline directions for further research, including a concept of adaptive intelligent registry proxies that can opportunistically employ peer-to-peer caching and sharing of registry information when it is appropriate from both the system perspective and the individual client perspective.

UAVs are critical to the U. S. Army's Force Transformation. Large numbers of UAVs will be employed per Future Combat System (FCS) Unit of Action (UoA). To relieve the burden of controlling and coordinating multiple UAVs in a given UoA, UAVs must operate autonomously and collaboratively while engaging in RSTA and other missions. Rockwell Scientific is developing Autonomous Collaborative Mission Systems (ACMS), an extensible architecture and behavior planning/collaboration approach, to enable groups of UAVs to operate autonomously in a collaborative environment. The architecture is modular, and the modules may be run in different locations/platforms to accommodate the constraints of available hardware, processing resources and mission needs. The modules and uniform interfaces provide a consistent and platform-independent baseline mission collaboration mechanism and signaling protocol across different platforms. Further, the modular design allows for the flexible and convenient extension to new autonomous collaborative behaviors to the ACMS. In this article, we first discuss our observations in implementing autonomous collaborative behaviors in general and under ACMS. Second, we present the results of our implementation of two such behaviors in the ACMS as examples.

The Soldier Information Requirements Technology Demonstration (SIREQ TD) project is an experimentation program to identify technologies that significantly enhance the performance of our future soldiers. One of the study series involved a 2 x 2 factorial comparison of the benefits of digital maps over paper maps, and the use of radios vs. no radios. Thirty-two Canadian regular force infantry soldiers performed force-on-force tactical assault missions in wooded terrain, with each soldier participating in all four test conditions. The radios were configured to operate in 4 subnets: 1 channel for each of the 2 Assault Groups (4 soldiers on a channel); a Section Commander/2IC channel; and an all-users channel. Note that in the no-radio conditions soldiers still operated the press-to-talk switch to allow recording of communications, but the speaker volume was set to zero. All communications were date/time stamped, identified as to the user and channel, and the audio was digitally recorded for later analysis as to the nature and content of the message. The study showed that although the type and function of communication did not change dramatically across the four test conditions, there was an increased amount of overall communication when soldiers carried radios compared to when they did not. Other quantitative results pertaining to communications, situation awareness, perceived workload, and team effectiveness are presented, along with subjective measures collected by questionnaires and focus group discussions.

To evaluate the effect of digitization on platoon effectiveness and investigate the suitability of different platoon structures, a twelve-day field trial was undertaken with a Company of light infantry at Fort Benning, Georgia. Test missions were conducted in both day and night conditions, in wooded and urban terrain environments, in each of three organizational structures, with and without digitization. The three different organizational structures included our current in-service 8-man Section, a 13-man USMC squad, and a distributed model comprising six four-man teams. Results of this study confirmed that the effectiveness of a dismounted platoon is significantly enhanced by the use of select digital enhancements in the areas of navigation, situation awareness, communications, and command. During night operations, digitally-enabled capabilities were the difference between mission success and failure. None of the organizational structures tested proved to be universally better than the others at optimizing the benefits of digitally-enhanced capabilities, although each had their strengths and weaknesses. However, considerable insights were gained in the organizational structure issues of distributed small unit command and control, swarming formation tactics, and the tactics, techniques, and procedures necessary to employ small units effectively in a NCW environment.

The world that we live in is filled with large scale agent systems, from diverse fields such as biology, ecology or finance. Inspired by the desire to better understand and make the best out of these systems, we propose an approach which builds stochastic mathematical models, in particular G-networks models, that allow the efficient representation of systems of agents and offer the possibility to analyze their behavior using mathematics. This work complements our previous results on the discrete event simulation of adversarial tactical scenarios. We aim to provide insights into systems in terms of their performance and behavior, to identify the parameters which strongly influence them, and to evaluate how well individual goals can be achieved. With our approach, one can compare the effects of alternatives and chose the best one available. We model routine activities as well as situations such as: changing plans (e.g. destination or target), splitting forces to carry out alternative plans, or even changing on adversary group. Behaviors such as competition and collaboration are included. We demonstrate our approach with some urban military planning scenarios and analyze the results. This work can be used to model the system at different abstraction levels, in terms of the number of agents and the size of the geographical location. In doing so, we greatly reduce computational complexity and save time and resources. We conclude the paper with potential extensions of the model, for example the arrival of reinforcements, the impact of released chemicals and so on.

This paper presents an overview of mobile mesh networking technology and broadband multimedia applications that can support mission-critical operations for network-centric tactical defense operations. Such broadband, autonomous, rapidly deployable, and secure networking and distributed applications provide survivable and reliable means of providing timely information to military forces to gain information superiority and support efficient mission execution. In this paper, first, the communications requirements for such highly dynamic battlefield environments are outlined. This is followed by an overview of the evolution of autonomous mobile mesh networking technology. The technical challenges that need to be addressed for providing broadband multimedia services on such autonomous mobile mesh networks are enumerated and discussed, based on the experience gained in designing and implementing such an integrated system. Finally, as an example, a product designed and implemented for public safety use, is described to highlight the potential of such an integrated solution for defense services. The software-based product comprises an integrated mobile mesh network and a set of distributed multimedia applications that include multicast video, location and tracking, white-boarding, and distributed interactive messaging.

Optical communications technologies are being actively explored by the defense and security communities as a potential solution to alleviate bandwidth bottlenecks and to provide covert, jam resistant communications without spectrum restrictions. While static fiber-optic networks are widely deployed in the Department of Defense (DoD) communications network, the integration of wireless, free space optical (FSO) communications technology is required to provide end-to-end high bandwidth paths to support mobile defense and security operations. This paper presents an analysis of inherent benefits of optical wireless communications technologies in enabling net-centric applications and discusses specific technology and architectural challenges that need to be overcome before these technologies can be seamlessly integrated in the Global Information Grid (GIG) to fully realize the net-centric vision.

In this work we survey distributed systems that can provide group communications, including both existing commercial systems and proposed research systems. Distributed systems are compared across multiple architectural characteristics such as fault-tolerance, scalability, security, delivery guarantees, and management as well as contrasted against systems utilizing peer-to-peer systems, application-level multicast, and IP layer multicast. Comparing distributed systems which provide group communications is a step toward developing systems appropriate for military network-centric group communications where more research is needed. A secondary result is an attempt to merge group communications terminology between distributed systems, peer-to-peer, application-layer multicast and IP layer multicast.

An extensible network simulation application was developed to study wireless battlefield communications. The application monitors node mobility and depicts broadcast and unicast traffic as expanding rings and directed links. The network simulation was specially designed to support fault injection to show the impact of air strikes on disabling nodes. The application takes standard ns-2 trace files as an input and provides for performance data output in different graphical forms (histograms and x/y plots). Network visualization via animation of simulation output can be saved in AVI format that may serve as a basis for a real-time battlefield awareness system.

This paper presents an improvement of a novel analytic model for ad hoc networks based on Markov chains whose states represent node degree and the number of link failures. The model divides a geographic area into logical hexagonal cells, where random walk with probabilistic state-transition matrix determines link creation/failure. We can thus compute two important metrics characterizing the dynamics of a node's random movement: the expected times for the number of link changes to drop below and for the node degree to exceed a threshold. We obtained the two-dimensional Markov chain that allows us to apply these two metrics as the selection rules for the virtual backbone formation algorithm. Hence, our model is used to analyze the performance of service discovery architectures based on virtual backbone in mobile ad-hoc networks. We also plan to extend the created modeling framework to derive a number of additional metrics that characterize network connectivity, capacity, and survivability. Because the model is capable of computing the dynamics and the expected value of the number of a node's neighbors, it can also be used to estimate the level of interference as well as achievable and sustainable routing path diversity, degree of network connectivity, and the stability of routing tables. We expect to apply our modeling framework to analytic assessment of the stability of routing domains. The rate and expected values at which the nodes move in and out of domains characterize the rate of degradation of optimally built routing domains, and hence the resulting routing scalability and overhead.

Contemporary high performance data networks carry a wide range of multimedia services (voice, video, audio, text, sensor data, etc.) that require an outstanding Quality of Service (QoS) to provide performance guarantees in priority delivery, latency, bandwidth utilization, load balancing, etc. With the advent of recent Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) network standards, the QoS has made significant progress in performance to provide these performance guarantees. Right now, attention has turned to the task of managing these QoS networks more efficiently through the handling of network traffic. We have investigated a novel Network Traffic Forecasting Assisted QoS Planner technology that will provide constantly updated forecasts of data traffic and server loads to any application that needs this information. Using source models of voice, video and data traffic based on empirical studies of TCP/IP data traffic carried out by Paxson and Floyd in the 1990's, our studies have shown that the system may provide up to 43% bandwidth savings for MPLS data streams, by predicting future traffic flows and reserving network resources to accommodate the predicted traffic. The system additionally provides a means to submit bandwidth reservation requests for those applications that need assured service guarantees for data delivery. The technology essentially increases the efficiency and effectiveness of multimedia information and communication network infrastructure that supports multiple or adaptive QoS levels for multimedia data networking and information system applications.

Conventional platform-centric communication systems are now being replaced by modern network-centric systems such as the packet-switching Internet. A number of problems arise, resulting mainly from the lingering effects of the outdated Shannon information theory. Data has traditionally been communicated in meaningless bit streams according to the Shannon theory. An alternative Autosophy theory communicates data "content" in Internet packets using universal data formats. The new theory evolved from research into self-assembling structures, such as chemical crystals and living trees. Similar natural principles can produce self-assembling data structures that grow in electronic memories without programming -- like data crystals or data trees. The learning algorithms grow hyperspace knowledge libraries for communication and archiving. The advantages include high lossless data compression, unbreakable "codebook" encryption, resistance to transmission errors, universally compatible data formats, and virtual immunity to the Internet's Quality of Service (QoS) problems. A content-based 64bit data format was developed for real-time multimedia Internet communications. Legacy data can be converted to the universal 64bit format using software patches or integrated chipsets. The codes can then be forwarded via any media (cable, radio, satellite, or the Internet) without reformatting. The new data formats could be phased in without disruption to existing communications.

It is a hot focus of current researches in video standards that how to transmit video streams over Internet and wireless networks. One of the key methods is FGS(Fine-Granular-Scalability), which can always adapt to the network bandwidth varying but with some sacrifice of coding efficiency, is supported by MPEG-4. Object-based video coding algorithm has been firstly included in MPEG-4 standard that can be applied in interactive video. However, the real time segmentation of VOP(video object plan) is difficult that limit the application of MPEG-4 standard in interactive video. H.264/AVC is the up-to-date video-coding standard, which enhance compression performance and provision a network-friendly video representation. In this paper, we proposed a new Object Based FGS(OBFGS) coding algorithm embedded in H.264/AVC that is different from that in mpeg-4. After the algorithms optimization for the H.264 encoder, the FGS first finish the base-layer coding. Then extract moving VOP using the base-layer information of motion vectors and DCT coefficients. Sparse motion vector field of p-frame composed of 4*4 blocks, 4*8 blocks and 8*4 blocks in base-layer is interpolated. The DCT coefficient of I-frame is calculated by using information of spatial intra-prediction. After forward projecting each p-frame vector to the immediate adjacent I-frame, the method extracts moving VOPs (video object plan) using a recursion 4*4 block classification process. Only the blocks that belong to the moving VOP in 4*4 block-level accuracy is coded to produce enhancement-layer stream. Experimental results show that our proposed system can obtain high interested VOP quality at the cost of fewer coding efficiency.