Reliable wireless communications is one of the key challenges for defence forces, and one of the biggest force multipliers.
The Mistral Project Team consisting of Tyndall National Institute, Trinity College Dublin, Irish Defence Forces, and A-techSYN, is enabling game changing VHF radio coverage improvement through flying AI driven communication drones.
The MISTRAL solution overcomes high propagation losses by relaying VHF communications via flying drones. AI based algorithms automatically predict accurate coverage and optimize the drone flight paths to provide reliable connectivity to mobile users on the ground. Measurements and flight tests indicate that a single drone can increase the coverage area by over 400x and MISTRAL supports multiple drones.
MISTRAL will significantly increase capabilities of the defence forces while reducing risks to personnel. In addition, the concept is broadly applicable to civilian use cases such as providing dynamic 5G coverage, communications in emergency or disaster scenarios, and search & rescue.
The project is funded through the Science Foundation Ireland Defence Organisation Innovation Challenge.
Watch a video about the brilliant work done by the Tyndall team, in collaboration with others, here: