Leveraging Internet of Things within the military network environment — Challenges and solutions

The widespread adoption of IoT technologies will significantly affect many aspects of military operations. A growing number of battlefield assets will soon become networked entities, thanks to capillary and high density personal and environment sensors systems. The accurate and fine-grained information gathered could significantly benefit military intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance operations, facilitate automated supply chain logistics, and facilitate urban operations in mega-city environments. To achieve these goals, research has to address several issues, such as reconciling the differences between commercial IoT architectural patterns and military network architectures, interoperability between different IoT systems, data processing and information management, and realization of resource-efficient IoT middleware solutions. The resource constrained tactical networking environment makes this research agenda particularly challenging but also pressing in terms of the need for novel middleware solutions.