The Internet-of-Battlefield-Things (IoBT)-Based Enemy Localization Using Soldiers Location and Gunshot Direction

Abstract

The real-time information of enemy locations is capable to transform the outcome of combat operations. Such information gathered using connected soldiers on the Internet of Battlefield Things (IoBT) is highly beneficial to create situational awareness (SA) and to plan an effective war strategy. This article presents the novel enemy localization method that uses the soldier's own locations and their gunshot direction. The hardware prototype has been developed that uses a triangulation for an enemy localization in two soldiers and a single enemy scenario. 4.24±1.77 m of average localization error and ±4° of gunshot direction error has been observed during this prototype testing. This basic model is further extended using three-stage software simulation for multiple soldiers and multiple enemy scenarios with the necessary assumptions. The effective algorithm has been proposed, which differentiates between the ghost and true predictions by analyzing the groups of subsequent shooting intents (i.e., frames). Four different complex scenarios are tested in the first stage of the simulation, around three to six frames are required for the accurate enemy localization in the relatively simple cases, and nine frames are required for the complex cases. The random error within ±4° in gunshot direction is included in the second stage of the simulation which required almost double the number of frames for similar four cases. As the number of frames increases, the accuracy of the proposed algorithm improves and better ghost point elimination is observed. In the third stage, two conventional clustering algorithms are implemented to validate the presented work. The comparative analysis shows that the proposed algorithm is faster, computationally simple, consistent, and reliable compared with others. Detailed analysis of hardware and software results for various scenarios has been discussed in this article.