## 2 Hardware Components
_Power Supply Module._ The system requires a single 230 V/50 Hz power supply that is used to generate the required voltages for the rest of the components. In order to provide for continuous operations for extended periods of time, a combination of gasoline-powered and battery-powered generators has been chosen for the two power sources to be used, connected in the series as a hybrid solution. The gasoline-powered generator is aimed at providing power most of the time, while the battery-powered generator acts as a backup to allow for the refueling of the main generator and to ensure system operation even in cases of failure of the primary power source. The gasoline-powered generator is sized for powering the equipment and charging the portable battery power station at the same time. We use the Honda EU10i Generator [20], which can deliver up to 1000 W and at a weight of 13 kg, can be managed by a single person. It achieves an 8-hour continuous operation time without refueling at one-fourth of the maximum load. The portable battery power station included in the deployable equipment is the PowerOak PS7 [21], a compact solution for portable power, which offers 1000 Wh at 15.6 kg of weight. It has a nominal power output of 600 W and provides outputs of various types and voltages. There is a 12 V DC output, USB-C and USB-A outputs, and two 230 V AC outputs, covering not only the needs of the field communication system but also allowing the FRs to charge other devices or equipment if needed. _802.11 ax Access Point._ An 802.11 ax [22] capable Access Point (AP) is used to set up the WLAN network. The 802.11 ax standard, also known as WiFi 6, is an incremental improvement over the previous generations of WiFi networks and delivers several key improvements that are applicable to the INGENIOUS use case, namely:  
* A more efficient medium access control method, _orthogonal frequency division multiple access_, that in contrast to the _carrier-sense multiple access with collision avoidance_, is able to mitigate collisions by allocating parts of the spectrum to the various station devices and thus move the network from a contention to schedule based service. The proposed communication system must support multiple station devices with diverse bandwidth needs, making simultaneous use of the wireless channel and thus compete for air time. OFDMA is better suited to manage such use cases, resulting in a network with a higher throughput and lower access latency. * Longer symbol duration and guard interval. Multipath propagation over long distances can cause intersymbol interference, a type of self-interference ominous in outdoor wireless communications caused by delayed symbols arriving at the receiver. Guard intervals are used to ensure that distinct transmissions do not interfere with one another, and 802.11 ax provides the option for up to four times longer guard intervals in comparison to the previous standards, at 3.2. By increasing the guard interval and the symbol duration, the percentage of airtime used for data transmission remains unchanged, and thus the communication distance can be increased without sacrificing transmission speed [23]. * 802.11 ac allowed for multi-user MIMO transmissions only from the AP towards the stations (DL MU-MIMO). This allowed for the increase of the total downlink throughput and was advantageous in usage scenarios when the stations mostly downloadeddata. In INGENIOUS, the situation is different due to the need to upload video streams and sensor data for remote processing and the creation of a common operational picture. WiFi 6 expands the MU-MIMO capability to uplink transmissions, delivering a communication technology better equipped to handle networks where uplink traffic dominates [24]. * 802.11 ax adopts the power-saving technique introduced in IEEE 802.11 ah, called Target Wake Time (TWT). This allows an access point to define a specific time or set of times for devices to access the wireless network resulting in increased sleep time and therefore, reduced power consumption.