Friend-Foe Identification SystemJustin Ayvazian, Ben Johnson, Eric Putney, Mike Ruth

Faculty Advisor: Prof. Sandip Kundu

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

ECE 415/ECE 416 SENIOR DESIGN PROJECT 2010College of Engineering - University of Massachusetts Amherst

BackgroundWhen combating an enemy who uses guerilla tactics

and deception as their primary offensive strategy, reliably identifying friendly forces from enemy units or imposters can often be the deciding factor between facing a devastating surprise attack or the containment of a serious threat. While current friend and foe identification systems are effective for identifying friendly units, these systems rely on hardware keys that can be stolen from friendly soldiers. The Friend and Foe Identification System (FFID) however, will use keypad-input passwords to identify friendly vehicles, preventing the theft of identification keys. This automated system allows for the fast and reliable identification of multiple vehicles simultaneously in a secure way that will prevent both hijackings and hostile imposters.

System Operations Overview

Hardware Block Diagrams

Design Challenges•Vehicle to Base Wireless Communication

•Development of Compact and Reliable Communication Scheme

•Transmission Security

•Ease of Use for Friendly Soldiers

•GPS Vehicle Tracking

•Graphical Display Integration

System Security Overview

Prototype Features•RC5 Packet Encryption/Decryption

•802.11 Wireless Communication

•C Software Implementation

•FPGA Hardware

•GPS Tracking

•Graphical User Interface

Acknowledgements

•Wireless Security

•Purpose: Prevent eavesdroppers from decoding transmissions

•Transmitted data encrypted by RC5 algorithm

•Block cipher with data dependant rotations

•Password Interface

•Purpose: Prevent hijacked vehicles from being identified as friendly

•Common password mentally stored by military personnel

•Each vehicle transmits unique password by transforming common password with a unique random seed

Our proposed system will consist of two different units, a transponder (vehicle) unit and an interrogation (base) unit. The base unit will continuously request identification from any vehicle entering the communication range. The vehicle will respond to this request and be labeled as friendly, hostile, hijacked, or unknown based upon the password input by vehicle personnel. Additionally, the base unit will track the GPS coordinates of each vehicle it encounters and output their location on a graphical interface. In order to protect the communication scheme from interception, wireless transmissions will be encrypted.

We would like to thank Professor Kundu, Professor Tessier, General Dynamics, Fran Caron and Keith Shimeld. This project was fully funded by the ECE department.

•Pictures Here: DE-II pic and team kundu pic

Orange: Hardware Peripherals

Red: Software Control Modules

Blue: Security and Encryption Modules

Gray: Password Input Interface

Fig 1: System Overview

The base will identify and track all transponder outfitted vehicles within the communication range based on password transmissions from each vehicle.

Fig 2: Communication Scheme

This figure shows one full security identification conversation between a base and vehicle. Each arrow represents one packet, with the data contained in each packet listed above.

Team Photo

From Left to Right: Ben Johnson, Mike Ruth, Prof. Sandip Kundu, Eric Putney, and Justin Ayvazian