A heterogeneous tactical cloud architecture for emergency services search and rescue operations

With an increased adoption of uninhabited platforms in tactical environments such as search and rescue operations the proliferation of tactical assets equipped with advanced computing, sensing and networking capabilities becomes complex to manage. Edge/tactical cloud architectures provide the necessary automation processes for managing and scaling services and applications deployed across a larger number of platforms. However, size weight and power restrictions on tactical platforms leads to a heterogeneity in deployed infrastructure for both compute capabilities and available network bearers which raises complexities that need to be addressed by the underlying cloud infrastructure. In this paper we propose and demonstrate a heterogeneous cloud architecture used for a search and rescue training operation conducted by Surf Life Saving South Australia in collaboration with the Defence Science and Technology Group.