Wireless communication is essential for coordination of emergency response efforts. However, the various kinds of unit (fire, police, FBI and unattended sensors) do not necessarily have access to common radio architectures. To achieve high levels of flexibility and scalability for wireless communication, the processing of the wireless waveforms must be performed in software: i.e., "software radio". Migrating algorithms from hardware to software can increase the level of functionality but only if the communication protocols are established at run time. We propose an approach to establishing communication by explicitly maintaining self-awareness and communication of knowledge about the operation of the communication nodes. The self-awareness and communication of knowledge is based on the maintenance of an explicit, declarative knowledge base or "ontology" of communication. Hence, we refer to the concept as "Ontology Based Radio" (OBR). An ontology captures the basic terminology (concepts) of the domain of interest and the relationships among the concepts. Ontologies can be expressed in the DARPA Agent Markup Language (DAML), and processed either off-line using a theorem prover or in real time using an expert system engine. The main idea of OBR is that the communication nodes ``understand'' the contents of information to be transferred, their own capabilities and capabilities of the destination units. The goal of the proposed project is to develop a proof of concept that demonstrates optimized dynamic interoperability between different kinds of communication node, especially unattended sensors as well as radios used by emergency response teams.
