Interoperability of Unattended Ground Sensors with an open architecture controller using SensorML

Unattended Ground Sensors (UGS) from a wide range of manufacturers have difficulty interoperating with each other and common control and dissemination points. Typically, sensor data is transmitted via RF or wired connections to a central location where the data can be fused together and transmitted further via satellite to a Processing, Exploitation and Dissemination (PED) system. These PED's are charged with analyzing the data to create real time actionable intelligence for the war fighter. However, when several disparate sensors from different manufacturers are used, interoperability problems arise. Therefore, a central UGS controller that accepts data from a wide range of sensors and helps them interoperate is essential. This paper addresses benefits derived from using the Open Geospatial Consortium's (OGC) Sensor Model Language (SensorML) sensor descriptions for an UGS controller. SensorML 1.0 is an approved OGC standard and is one of the major components within the OGC Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) suite of standards. SensorML provides standard models and an XML encoding for describing any process, including the process of measurement by sensors. By incorporating SensorML, an UGS controller can accept data from various sensors from different manufacturers, and interpret that data with the SensorML descriptions to allow the controller to take programmed actions and interoperate between sensors. Furthermore, SensorML can be used to translate the native sensor formats once the original data has been transmitted to the PED. Therefore, this makes a SensorML enabled UGS controller an extremely powerful tool that provides situational awareness by combining multiple sensors to form a single common operational picture (COP).