Engagement Interfaces

An engagement interface is a special kind of WiFi interface that remains idle until tasked to track a threat or other entity of interest.

Interface Types

There are two interface types:

Acquisition Interface (The most common type)

These interfaces are your standard interfaces, configured like this:

[wifi_interfaces.wlx9cefd5f89389]
active = true
channels_2g = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 ]
channels_5g = []
channels_6g = []

Interfaces of this type are constantly hopping over channels to regularly and predictably record large parts of the WiFi spectrum. They are tuned to one channel at a time and can only record traffic on that channel.

This is great for situational awareness and detection of threats. However, this does not provide high-resolution data for when a threat has been detected.

For example, let's assume an acquisition interface has detected a drone/UAV one channel 6. It will record the drone and hop to channel 7, then channel 8, and so on. It will not record any position data and status of the UAV while it hops over channels, except for channel 6. Depending on your configuration, the time to complete a full hop cycle can be more than a minute, and you would only see spotty movement of the drone.

This is where engagement interfaces come in.

Engagement Interfaces

An engagement interface is idle until tasked by nzyme-tap to engage a target. Going back to our example of a drone detection on channel 6, the nzyme-tap would task an available engagement interface that supports channel 6 to engage the drone.

The engagement interface will tune to channel 6 and remain on that channel until the drone disappears. Once it has disappeared (after 60 seconds of no recorded signal), the engagement interface will enter SEEKING mode, in which it rapidly jumps over channels until it records the target again. If it does detect the target while SEEKING, it will go back into ENGAGE mode until it loses the target again.

If the target is not seen during SEEKING for 5 minutes, the target is considered lost and the engagement interface disengages, returning to IDLE until it is tasked to follow a new target.

Configuring an Engagement Interface

It is configured in your nzyme-tap configuration file like this:

[wifi_engagement_interfaces.wlx9cefd5f8046a]
active = true
engage = ["UAV"]
supported_channels_2g = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]
supported_channels_5g = [36, 40, 44, 48, 52, 56, 60, 64, 100, 104, 108, 112, 116]
supported_channels_6g = []

Note that the configuration is very similar to standard wifi_interfaces. However, there are some key differences:

Configuration Key	Explanation
engage	The type of threats or entities to engage. Currently this can only be UAV to track drones.
supported_channels_2g	Channels in the 2.4 GHz band this interface can engage on. You should list all supported channels in this band here.
supported_channels_5g	Channels in the 5 GHz band this interface can engage on. You should list all supported channels in this band here.
supported_channels_6g	Channels in the 6 GHz band this interface can engage on. You should list all supported channels in this band here.

Note that an interface can only be an acquisition or engagement interface and not both at once. You can also only configure an engagement interface if you have at least one acquisition interface.

FAQ

What if there are more targets than engagement interfaces?

Let's say you have two engagement interfaces and there are three drones. The first two drones will be engaged using the two available engagement interfaces. The third drone cannot be engaged because there is no engagement interface available. However, the default acquisition interfaces will still record the drone, just during channel hopping and with lower resolution data.

You can configure as many engagement interfaces as you wish and the final number of interfaces should be based on a cost/value calculation. Engagement interface do not add significant processing overhead to nzyme-tap, especially if they are IDLE.