Flash communication device aims to help wildland firefighters
Prescott, AZ - Military technologies often make their way into the civilian world, but the recent transition of one high-tech system was spurred by the deaths of 19 “hotshot” firefighters in Arizona a year ago.
Realizing poor communication was a key factor in the June 30, 2013 Yarnell Hill Blaze that killed 19 Prescott, Ariz. firefighters, a federal defense agency vowed to deliver better communication capabilities to Prescott within a year after the tragedy. Beating that deadline, communications technology company Persistent Systems LLC, in late May delivered to the Prescott Fire Department communications equipment featuring what it calls its “revolutionary” Wave Relay technology.
The technology, so exclusive it was previously used by U.S. Special Operations Forces, allows uninterrupted communications to “hop” seamlessly between multiple users’ radios, effectively turning each user — whether on the ground or in the air — into a “self-forming” cell phone tower.
It also includes a feature that can run through a commercially available Android phone that allows everyone to see where all team members and support elements are, and to communicate in real time.
The specialized equipment was purchased by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and donated to Prescott.
A local tie to the project is The Dalles resident Ben Wring, the senior sales engineer for Persistent Systems, which is based in New York City but has several remote workers, including Wring. “It’s cool to transition to civil use something we have used for years with the military,” said Wring. “This program enables fire line communications and real-time situational awareness in ways not previously available to these brave firefighters.”
The program is called FLASH, or Fire Line Advanced Situational Awareness for Handhelds.
A press release from Persistent Systems said the FLASH program “aims to end the day when firefighters are left to wonder where the fire line is, where their teammates are, or what the latest wind and weather reports are.”
Wring took the technology down to Arizona in May and trained the Prescott firefighters on it.
Wesley Mitchell, an account manager at Persistent Systems, said, “FLASH takes a battle-proven system and repurposes it for firefighters, giving them some of the same capabilities as we provide for the Department of Defense.”
FLASH permits each firefighter to know where every firefighter is, and where every plane is overhead. “Wave Relay transmits information seamlessly among and between all deployed assets,” said Mitchell.
The Wave Relay technology is especially apt for wildland firefighting because, like U.S. Special operations Forces teams, they often find themselves in austere landscapes, without cell phone reception or radio signal repeater towers.
“It really is a privilege for us to work with these firefighters,” Mitchell said. “We’re helping them to do their jobs more effectively and also more safely.”
If an agency doesn’t have a plane in the air to relay communications among assets, fire crews can quickly set up one of Persistent System’s Wave Relay ridge top relays, Wring said. The firefighters even become relays themselves as teams move around on site.
In addition to radios, the system’s handheld display feature, which operates on Android phones, allows a firefighter to chart a fire line that can be uploaded in real time and instantly observed by incident commanders and fellow firefighters.
“They can bread-crumb a trail as they walk,” Wring said.
“They can put a mark on the map where they want to coordinate a water drop and everyone can see it,” he added.
The Android phone is packaged in a military-grade, waterproof protective case which provides a rugged USB interface.
Persistent System’s Wave Relay technology converts the USB interface to Ethernet, Wring said. Wave Relay is a wireless ad hoc network, and the handheld radios and phones effectively become a wireless Ethernet cable. “It doesn’t need a host-client architecture to make everything work,” Wring said.
When a firefighter is mapping a fire line, for example, they take a geo-cached image on their Android phone with time/date/location information automatically included and broadcast it to everyone on the network.
“You see where everyone was walking and you see where they stopped to take a picture. You can see the fire develop and move,” Wring said.
“We’ve been kind of getting an education on how to fight wildfires,” Wring said. They learned it can take all day, sometimes, to get back to incident command on the boundaries of a wildfire, and of course, by then the boundaries will have changed.
With the Wave Relay technology, the command center can be a long distance away. For the May training exercise, the incident command was actually in Arlington, Va., headquarters of the federal defense agency which donated the equipment to the Prescott Fire Department.
Impressive as the technology is, it’s easy to use.
“Really, the firefighters only have to turn it on,” Wring said. “Many tell me they call it their ‘easy button’.”
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Persistent Systems, LLC Modernizes Communications For Firefighters
System Capabilities:
• 16 Channels of Voice Communications
• Position Location for all Radios shared throughout the network –
Instant Situational Awareness
• Multiple Video Streams to the Firefighters directly and incident
command
• Radio Over IP (RoIP) Compatible
• Cloud Relay™ - Beyond Line of Site Communications to
headquarters or other groups of firefighters for seemless
voice, SA and data
• Quickly integrate additional sensors to create a holistic view of the situation.
June 11, 2014
New York, NY
PERSISTENT SYSTEMS, LLC MODERNIZES COMMUNICATIONS
FOR FIREFIGHTERS
PERSISTENT SYSTEMS, LLC (“Persistent”), a revolutionary technology company specializing in mission- critical wireless communications systems traveled to Prescott, Arizona, to demonstrate how their Wave Relay® technology could help firefighters combat the ever-present communications challenges associated with fighting wildfires. In June 2013, 19 firefighters lost their lives to what became known as the Yarnell Hill Blaze. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) responded to this tragic loss by initiating the Fire Line Advanced Situation Awareness for Handhelds (“FLASH”) Program to enable reliable communications and situational awareness in the field. The program aims to end the day when firefighters are left to wonder where the fire line is, where their teammates are, or what the latest wind and weather reports are. The Wave Relay® solution was delivered and deployed in less than 1 week on May 26, 2014. Prescott-area firefighters are now equipped with Persistent’s mobile ad-hoc wireless networking (MANET) solution that has already proven its worth through years of operational experience with U.S. Special Forces units.
Persistent is working closely with FLASH technology to combat the operational deficiencies first responders face when battling complicated situations, including wildfires.
Currently, firefighters often suffer from a major gap in communications and situational awareness in their inclement work environments. For example, they can easily lose communication with their commanders, other teams of firefighters operating in their vicinity, and even with their own teammates. Non-Wave Relay® systems, even if they successfully establish lines of communication, often experience life-threatening transmission delays and interruptions.
“We are privileged to help out our firefighters. Wave Relay® is a battle-proven system that can truly help them to communicate vital information when it matters most. Everyone will instantly be able to see where all team members and support elements are, and to communicate and collaborate in real-time. We are looking forward to training more firefighters,” said Wesley Mitchell of Persistent Systems.
Persistent’s Wave Relay® system provides seamless connectivity between all firefighting assets. No longer will firefighters have to worry about directly communicating with the command center or with other ridge lines and canyons. Wave Relay® seamlessly hops among system radios located on firefighters, aircraft, or mountain top repeaters. In addition, by leveraging Persistent’s Cloud Relay™ technology, all participants have beyond-line-of-sight communications that enable full, real-time situational awareness, collaboration, video, and push-to-talk communications.
Darpa's press release on collaboration with Persistent Systems,LLC


Download Firefighting Kit Spec Sheet Here
From Close Air Support to Fire Suppression
Prescott, AZ - In the heat of battle, lives can depend on being able to coordinate troop positions safely while directing aircraft to provide close air support for ground forces. DARPA’s Persistent Close Air Support (PCAS) program aims to help overcome those challenges by providing warfighters with advanced digital tools for situational awareness and targeting in place of legacy communications systems and traditional paper maps.
Firefighters battling wildfires face challenges very similar to those that troops face in battle—the need for situational awareness, precise coordination of airborne water drops and ensuring fellow firefighters are kept safe from rapidly moving and shifting flames. Unfortunately, advanced technology to overcome these hurdles has not been readily available to the firefighting community.
On May 27, DARPA personnel traveled to Prescott, Arizona to collaborate with firefighters to test the potential value of PCAS technology for these public servants. Called Fire Line Advanced Situational Awareness for Handhelds (FLASH), the prototype system includes tablet computers, aircraft-mounted sensors and radios designed to identify the location of every firefighter and firefighting aircraft in expansive fire zones. The system overlays multiple streams of information from airborne sensors, firefighters and fire command posts onto a shared digital map visible via tablet computers.
Using these technology tools during the three-day training demonstration, the firefighters were able to track each other’s positions in real time. They monitored the position of an observation aircraft overhead and watched a live-video feed from the aircraft providing a bird’s-eye view of the terrain. Participants in a command post in Prescott—as well as observers at DARPA’s offices in Arlington, Virginia—viewed the same live video feeds from the aircraft and could communicate in real time with firefighters in the field.
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The Pilot – Defense Contractor Chooses Pinehurst for New Office
Thursday, February 6, 2014
Source:
The pilot.com
Persistent Systems LLC, a global technology company based in New York City, has opened its first satellite office in Pinehurst and will showcase its networking capabilities across ground, vehicle and air during a demonstration next week.
Viewers will see video, voice and data moving across the network simultaneously and understand how the application can be replicated within “environments of interest,” whether they be in the defense or industrial sectors.
“It’s a networking radio technology that focuses on delivering video, data and voice into highly mobile, unpredictable situations,” said Adrien Robenhymer, the company’s vice president of business development and marketing. “It does it in a peer-to-peer capability. There are no towers or need for infrastructure.”
The demonstration will be held from 1 to 4 p.m. next Tuesday at the Persistent Systems office at 11 Village Club Court. The company currently has two local employees, but room for seven more in its 2,000-square-foot space, which also includes a conference room and research and development lab.
Persistent Systems develops, manufactures and integrates a patented and secure Mobile Ad Hoc Networking (MANET) system known as Wave Relay.
The company, founded in 2007, also has a research and development team that has designed wireless networking protocols to support the cutting-edge Wave Relay system and technology. Wave Relay is capable of running data, video, voice and other applications under the most difficult and unpredictable conditions.
For example, Robenhymer said the technology was used in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy in 2012.
“Within four hours, we had a 10-mile bubble of communication,” he said. “It allowed us to connect numerous buildings that did not have power, ships in the port, and fixed installation points. We can connect all sorts of different things because we’re a network.”
Robenhymer said the company’s suite of products has been field-proven and utilized in commercial, military, government, industrial, agriculture, mining, oil and gas, robotics and unmanned systems.
“Unmanned systems is an emerging market,” he said. “We’re already doing it for the military. We’re heavily looking into the commercial aspects of unmanned systems.”
Robenhymer said the company chose Pinehurst over Fayetteville for its satellite office.
“We didn’t want to be considered a typical defense contractor,” he said. “We felt Pinehurst was a much better match for us. It gives us proximity to Fort Bragg, but also a flavor for the commercial side of the business.”
Robenhymer said the company plans to recruit employees from the retiring military pool at Fort Bragg, as well as the three major universities in the Triangle.
“Being close to the Research Triangle Park was also a factor,” he said.
Pat Corso, executive director of Moore County Partners in Progress, said Persistent Systems is the second defense contractor in the past few months to set up shop in the county.
“It’s indicative of the interest these kinds of companies have in locating in a desirable, high-quality community,” Corso said. “They pre-selected us, which points to the fact that companies are choosing to come here based on their own homework. This is a strong indicator of why we should be proactively marketing to that industry.”
Partners in Progress intends to do just that when it launches Moore Alive later this year. The digital marketing initiative is designed to attract new residents and companies to the county.
“If we’re getting two defense contractors without any effort on our part, think of what will happen for us when we actually proactively market ourselves,” Corso said. “Imagine what the possibilities are when we begin marketing to them directly.”
Jane’s Defense Features Persistent Systems
Persistent Systems brings FMV to Android devices.
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March 2013 – Congratulations to Avwatch, Inc. On Being The Inaugural Wave Relay® Reseller Of The Year!
March 19th, 2013
New York, NY
Congratulations to Avwatch, Inc. on being the inaugural Wave Relay® Reseller of the Year!
Persistent Systems LLC, recently recognized Avwatch, Inc.’s team for their outstanding efforts reselling, promoting, and demonstrating the Wave Relay® Mobile Ad Hoc Networking (MANET) product line in 2012. “It is truly an honor to present the Reseller of the Year Award for 2012 to Avwatch who has far exceeded our expectations and has been an excellent extension of the Persistent Systems team,” said Director Adrien Robenhymer at Persistent Systems, LLC. “We believe that their knowledge and experience with the technology is at the highest level and we recognize their team as experts when in the field or selling the products.”
Persistent Systems, LLC closed 2012 with multiple resellers competing for this award. Due to worldwide recognition of the Wave Relay® capability, Persistent’s reseller program reaches US, United Kingdom and Australia. Resellers have access to specialized training courses from Persistent Systems to increase the education and expertise level of the Wave Relay® MANET.
February 2013 – MissionMobility Integrates Persistent Systems Technologies to Improve Products
February 25th 2013
Norfolk, VA
MissionMobility Integrates Persistent Systems Technologies to Improve Products
MissionMobility, a leading provider of Military-Grade Baseband Communication Solutions, is proud to announce that it is one of two approved domestic resellers of Persistent Systems LLC’s (“Persistent”) Wave Relay® mobile ad hoc wireless radio networking (“MANET”) solutions.
As a reseller, MissionMobility will be able to incorporate Persistent’s products into its own. Steve Newell, President and CEO of MissionMobility says that “this technology is very well suited to our primary customers because small tactical teams and travelling executive officers absolutely need access to reliable, secure video and voice capabilities amongst many other types of secure data transfer. Because Persistent’s Wave Relay® system continuously adapts to changes in terrain and other difficult environmental conditions, we can provide them with a much needed boost to the reliability of their mobile comms.”
The average wireless networking devices are susceptible to disconnection with even slight changes in the physical environment. Persistent’s Wave Relay® technology eliminates connection breakdown and allows transfer of all data types securely. This technological breakthrough permits constant contact with every other device that has this technology, even if one of them fails. The alignment between MissionMobility and Persistent will redefine the last mile of communication for military and first responders as it extends their range of operations, potentially saving the lives of those that operate at the edge.
“Use of Persistent’s products in the field has resulted in an almost universal belief that the equipment is very solid,” claims Brian Lasagna, VP of Sales & Service at MissionMobility. Persistent’s products will allow MissionMobility users to scale a significant number of meshed devices into a network, essentially making their own communication infrastructure. “MissionMobility is exceptionally pleased to be working with Persistent Systems… providing service to those who serve,” Steve Newell added.
February 2013 – Persistent Systems Achieves ISO 9001:2008 Certification
February 20th 2013
New York, NY
Persistent Systems Is Now ISO 9001:2008 Certified.
Persistent Systems LLC, a global leader in wireless Mobile Adhoc Network (MANET) devices is pleased to announce that it has achieved certification to the ISO 9001:2008 standard.
ISO 9001:2008 is recognized worldwide as the benchmark for Quality Management Systems. It is designed to be customer focused and provides the quality framework upon which Persistent meets customer expectations, produces error-free work, builds in quality, and continuously improves. Persistent Systems LLC ISO 9001:2008 registration was comprehensive and includes Design, Assembly, and Sale of our products.
Founded in 2007, achieving ISO 9001 certification was an important and natural progression in the growth of Persistent Systems LLC. Understanding that Quality was a key building block in the growth of the business, many quality systems and best practices were already in place and so a move under the ISO certification umbrella was a simple and efficient process.
“Ultimately our certification to ISO 9001 is a reflection of our commitment to meeting customer expectation, in design, application, reliability, service and overall quality of our products” said Herb Rubens, co-founder and CEO of Persistent Systems LLC. “We view the certification as an enabler for continued customer success and consequently our growth as a leading supplier of wireless MANET devices”.
MILTECH: Persistent Systems’ Wave Relay
A true Lifesaver in Operations.
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Shepard Media: AUVSI 2013
13 August 2013
New York, NY
by Beth Stevenson in Washington, DC
AUVSI 2013: ‘Wave Relay’ unveiled for UAV swarm ops
Persistent Systems is integrating a MANET communications capability onto an undisclosed US customer’s UAV for use in ‘swarm’ applications, company officials have revealed.
Speaking to Shephard during a pre-AUVSI briefing, Herb Rubens, CEO of the company, said testing of the ‘Wave Relay’ technology had been conducted in March and explained how integration in preparation for deployment is now underway. ‘The testing went well and the systems are being integrated for follow-on testing of deployment of the system,’ Rubens explained. ‘That particular use case has not been deployed yet.’
He explained the customer’s requirement demanded that multiple UAVs be controlled from a single ground control station (GCS), describing how the operational range of the UAVs exceeded the maximum range of communication from the GCS.
‘So there are basically two options in that scenario: Option one is to SATCOM equip all of the UAVs and operate them over high latency, expensive satellite links,’ Rubens noted. ‘Option number two is to use a mobile ad hoc network system like Wave Relay.
‘It uses the platforms themselves as range extensions. That was the route the customer took, so in this scenarios we had three Class II UAVs, and the first was operating at a distance of around 15nm from the GCS. Each additional UAV was a subsequent 25nm further away, so the UAV at the head of the chain was some 100nm from the control station.’
US Army Class II systems include the RQ-7 Shadow UAV while the US Air Force operators MQ-1 Predators and MQ-9 Reapers in the same category. Persistent Systems would not comment on which particular air frames were being used.
The UAV 'swarm' then demonstrated this concept of operations by pushing FMV from all three of the UAVs simultaneously, while also providing C2 for them all, Rubens continued. ‘Their goal is to deploy this summer. This will be the first time that this configuration is deployed. We’ve been doing work with designers on swarm technologies for some five years now, so we can use this on a number of classes of UAVs.’
‘When you enable a network on the battlefield, some of that control can occur at other points in the network,’ Rubens explained. ‘We’ve done capability demonstrations where unmanned ground robots were controlled by a user hopping through a small UAV platform as it was flying overhead of the ground robot. This is the first time these unmanned platforms have been able to communicate with each other.’
Wave Relay also lends itself to dismounted soldier operations, one such example being the receipt of ISR feeds from UAVs.
‘Typically, the problem with that is that only one person can have the specialised ISR receiver for the video,’ Rubens continued. ‘So our system is used as a dismounted soldier solution to connect to existing legacy ISR receivers and then redistribute the video to all of the members of the team, so all of the special forces team can view the video from the ISR platforms without every operator carrying heavy legacy ISR video reception equipment,’ he concluded.
Army Recognition:
Persistent Systems to highlight new Cloud Relay technology for communication solutions AUSA 2013.
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