System Entity Structure Ontological Data Fusion Process Integrated with C2 Systems

Abstract

With the advent of Network-Centric Warfare (NCW) concepts, Command and Control (C2) systems need efficient methods to produce, exchange, and consume diverse kinds of information within the networks. The System Entity Structure (SES) is an ontology framework that can facilitate information exchange in a network environment. From the perspective of the SES information exchange framework, the Battle Management Language (BML) serves to specify the information desired by a consumer in an unambiguous way. This paper formulates information exchange in the SES ontology via BML and defines novel pruning and transformation processes of the SES to extract and fuse data into higher-level representations. This supports increased interoperability between human users and other sensor systems. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed information exchange framework for data fusion systems, we illustrate the approach in an air defense operation scenario using Discrete Event System Specification (DEVS) modeling and simulation. The demonstration shows that the information requested by a commander is delivered in the right way at the right time so that it can support agile decision making against threats.