Smart Military Logistics Based on Internet of Things and Energy Harvesting

Abstract

Logistics is a challenge in military as things are fluid and on the move constantly 24 X 7. Managing inventory for weapon systems, vehicle parts, ammunition, food items, utensils, clothing and other day-today necessary items is cumbersome and needs a professional solution incorporating the geographical challenges faced by military. Supply chain in military is done manually and thus prone to errors due to poor inventory management and manual documentation. This paper brings a green solution to this problem with minimum resource requirement and maximum coverage, also keeping in mind the remote area challenges such as power and weather conditions. Backscatter radios communicate by means of reflections without any batteries; rather they generate energy from ambient electromagnetic waves through energy harvesting. Multistatic scatter network uses carrier emitters and readers to gather information from hundreds of tags placed on different set of items spread over a large area. This data generated by reader from tags in a warehouse can automate the inventory management and lead to smart logistics system for military cargo facilities. This paper proposes a multi-static topology for large warehouses with non-linear energy harvesting for effective coverage of cargo facility. Paper also gives an insight on information and energy outage in small-scale fading scenarios. Comparison with linear energy harvesting and mono-static model is also carried out and substantiated by simulations.