Researchers from the U.S. Army, IBM, University of Massachusetts-Amherst and Imperial College London have written a book covering studies about network performance tomography.

The book "Network Tomography: Identifiability, Measurement Design and Network State Inference," published by Cambridge University Press, describes several techniques for indirectly reconstructing a communications network's internal state by examining external information from edge nodes, the Army Research Laboratory (ARL) said Wednesday.

ARL noted the authors also offered best practices and guidelines for using network tomography in various applications such as peer autonomous systems and military coalition networks.

Ananthram Swami, the Army's senior research scientist for network science, said the book "covers all major components of network tomography, from the construction of a measurement system to the computation of the network state of interest."

Researchers plan to expand their work to include inferring link properties to help in resource allocation for tactical network analytics. They are also looking to study network tomography along with topology inference and quantum networks. 

Gen. Glen VanHerck, commander of North American Aerospace Defense Command and Northern Command, told reporters that his group tested the performance of a collaborative communications system in environments where connectivity is limited.

Global Information Dominance Experiment 3 (GIDE 3) ran from July 8 to 15 to test how combatant commands can collaboratively boost domain awareness and support decision making through artificial intelligence and sensors, DOD News reported Wednesday.

The Department of Defense (DOD) demonstrated this collaborative application between 11 combatant commands and other DOD components during the experiment.

GIDE 3 also aimed to trial how DOD can augment decision-making across both tactical and strategic levels, VanHerck noted.

James Beutel, deputy chief technology officer of the Department of the Air Force, said 5G has the potential to serve as a gateway for a range of “futuristic” data-centric applications including artificial intelligence, Federal News Network reported Wednesday.

He said at the Verizon-sponsored Federal Insights discussion that 5G could allow for head-up displays, virtual reality and other applications with the potential to speed up data transmissions.

“You talk about how much of force multiplier that is when one person can see that much data at one time and be able to share it and talk to with leaders in real-time,” he said.

Beutel said 5G could also address the complex data processing needs of AI in support of critical decision-making. The deputy CTO said the Air Force expects to have 5G technology implemented across all bases.

The 12th iteration of the Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act (FITARA) scorecard shows that four agencies saw improvement in their letter grades and those are the General Services Administration (GSA), the departments of the Interior and State and the Social Services Administration (SSA), Nextgov reported Wednesday.

GSA is the only agency that received an A+ rating in the scorecard.

In December, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee introduced a new metric to the FITARA 11.0 scorecard to evaluate agencies’ efforts to transition to GSA’s Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions vehicle for telecommunications services. 

During that time, the scorecard shows that eight agencies received an A grade in the category. In the 12th FITARA scorecard, two more agencies got A scores in the EIS category.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) saw its rating fall from a C- to a D- grade. DOJ showed a decline in letter grades in three categories: use of the Modernizing Government Technology Act, agency chief information officer authority improvements and data center optimization initiative.

According to the report, 18 of the 24 agencies received grades similar to the previous scorecard.