Autonomous relay platform • Off-grid communications • Patent pending

MARC–AURORA™ Autonomous Relay System

The MARC–AURORA™ platform is BLOCK VECTOR's patent-pending autonomous micro-infrastructure system engineered for harsh, remote, and communication-limited environments. MARC is designed to preserve communications, routing, telemetry, and local data integrity even during blackouts, link loss, or unstable RF conditions.

Patent Pending

MARC–AURORA is a proposed research platform that couples a rugged hardware capsule with an autonomy engine for routing stability and system health management. It is currently being prepared for federal SBIR consideration and for collaboration with universities and research labs working on resilient infrastructure, microgrids, and analog mission operations.

ARC — Autonomous Relay Capsule (Hardware Layer)

ARC is the hardware foundation for MARC–AURORA: a ruggedized modular enclosure intended for off-grid deployments, aerospace-analog missions, microgrid testbeds, emergency field units, and remote scientific stations. The capsule is designed to support:

• Redundant, multi-vendor routing cores for deterministic failover
• Supervisory compute nodes for autonomy, monitoring, and decision logic
• NVMe-backed blackout-window data retention
• Real-time thermal and power telemetry
• Energy-aware power paths for solar / battery / hybrid input
• Modular internal rails for radios, sensors, and mission-specific payloads

AURORA — Autonomous Unified Relay Operations & Routing Architecture (Software Layer)

AURORA is the autonomy framework that governs MARC's behavior. It focuses on health monitoring, drift detection, deterministic failover, and telemetry-driven anomaly response so that the relay can remain useful even with limited human supervision.

• Configuration drift detection with enforced known-good states
• Deterministic failover sequences based on quorum or policy
• Telemetry fusion across power, thermal, routing, and RF metrics
• Energy-aware compute scheduling to match available power budget
• Safe-mode transitions under partial system faults or thermal stress
• Local-first operation during link outages with automatic rejoin when connectivity returns

MARC — Integrated Field Platform

When ARC and AURORA are combined, MARC becomes a self-recovering relay node that behaves like a small piece of infrastructure rather than a single-purpose device. The integrated system is intended to support:

• Maintaining communication pathways during power or link outages
• Storing and forwarding mission data during blackout intervals
• Operating on minimal solar or battery power
• Surviving thermal cycling, EMI, vibration, and dust exposure
• Providing local compute and routing when cloud control is unavailable

Government & Research Alignment

MARC–AURORA is being developed as a candidate platform for NASA, DOE, NIST, and DHS research topics involving resilient communications, cyber-physical infrastructure, and off-grid mission continuity. The ER-Series testbed racks documented elsewhere on this site are used as the laboratory environment for telemetry modeling, supervisory logic experiments, and power/thermal characterization prior to field prototypes.