PICATINNY ARSENAL, N.J. - An Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center team was recently awarded a technology transfer award for their outstanding work transferring a technology developed by a federal laboratory to the commercial marketplace.

ARDEC employees senior scientist Dr. Myron Hohil, lead engineer Mark Mellini, design engineer Sean Schumer, and Innovative Wireless Technologies employee Kent Colling, received the 2010 Federal Laboratory Consortium Award in Technology Transfer for their work instilling the Coyote^TM Unattended Ground Sensor Network into the commercial market.

ARDEC and IWT developed the Coyote^TM Unattended Ground Sensor Network, which is a cost-effective, state-of-the-art, joint sensor and communications system that is easy to deploy, resistant to security attacks and reliably scales from small focused targets to nationwide networks.

"Unattended ground sensors have been deployed since the Vietnam War to sense military targets such as tanks, tracked vehicles and infiltrators," said Mellini. "Today, there's a growing need to use the technology for non-military border and infrastructure security."

Cost has been the limiting factor for wide-scale deployment of advanced sensing technologies, which have to overcome shortcomings of limited detection range, unreliable target characterization, and high associated battery costs, he said.

In 2007 Innovative Wireless Technologies approached ARDEC with the idea that Unmanned Ground System, or UGS, technology, which both entities were jointly developing for Army applications, could be applied to other federal agencies and commercial needs.

The two were ideal partners: ARDEC's mission in acoustic detection made it the most appropriate federal lab in which to advance the technology while IWT's focus on wireless products made it an ideal manufacturer.

Working under a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement, ARDEC transferred technology to IWT and IWT provided funding for the sensor signal processing development.

ARDEC and IWT successfully manufactured a prototype in less than a year and the resulting advances in the Coyote^TM UGS gave it a greater than 95 percent detection and classification rate at half the cost and more than five times the battery life of similar systems. Additionally, IWT's underlying communications platform allows it to rapidly transition Coyote^TM to other applications.

The Coyote^TM has already been supplied to the Department of Homeland Security and the Canadian government.

"Border security, both here and abroad, represents a multi-billion dollar market for systems, according to The Wall Street Journal," Mellini said. "The potential exists for tens of thousands of Coyote^TM UGS Network systems to be sold in the U.S. alone."

With sales to other countries, the market is estimated at tens of millions of dollars, he said. The Department of Homeland Security is evaluating the system for possible deployment for enhanced border security, infrastructure monitoring, perimeter security and counter-narcotic operations.

The Federal Laboratory Consortium for Technology Transfer is the nationwide network of more than 250 federal laboratories that provides the forum to develop strategies and opportunities for linking laboratory mission technologies and expertise with the marketplace.

An award presentation will take place at the FLC national conference April 29, in Albuquerque, N.M.