Jack L. Burbank

Key Challenges of Military Tactical Networking and the Elusive Promise of MANET Technology

Mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) are considered by many as fundamental to realizing the global information grid (GIG) and the vision of network-centric warfare. Indeed, a fully realized MANET would be powerful in enabling highly mobile, highly responsive, and quickly deployable tactical forces. However, significant technical challenges remain before this realization is viable. Addressing these deficiencies is a significant task that will require the invention and adoption of new technology. The goal of this article is not to declare these capabilities impossible to achieve. Rather, it is to manage the expectation of the capabilities achievable in the foreseeable future through edification on the technical difficulties standing between current technology and the desired capabilities. This article provides an overview of the military MANET problem space, describing the ideal military MANET solution. Several deficiencies are highlighted that exist between MANET technologies and the desired capability. Identified technical issues include system-level architecture, routing (both interior and exterior), management, security, and medium access control (MAC), with an emphasis on the former two areas

Security in Cognitive Radio Networks: The Required Evolution in Approaches to Wireless Network Security

This paper discusses the topic of wireless security in cognitive radio networks, delineating the key challenges in this area. With the ever-increasing scarcity of spectrum, cognitive radios are expected to become an increasingly important part of the overall wireless networking landscape. However, there is an important technical area that has received little attention to date in the cognitive radio paradigm: wireless security. The cognitive radio paradigm introduces entirely new classes of security threats and challenges, and providing strong security may prove to be the most difficult aspect of making cognitive radio a long-term commercially-viable concept. This paper delineates the key challenges in providing security in cognitive networks, discusses the current security posture of the emerging IEEE 802.22 cognitive radio standard, and identifies potential vulnerabilities along with potential mitigation approaches.

IEEE 802.16 broadband wireless technology and its application to the military problem space

This paper discusses the emerging IEEE 802.16 broadband wireless technologies and potential applicability to military networks. Interest continues to grow in the military network design community, for leveraging commercial technologies for use in the global information grid (GIG). This is also true in the design of tactical edge networks where there is growing interest in leveraging commercial wireless networking technologies such as the IEEE 802.11 wireless local area network (WLAN) technology family. An emerging commercial capability is in the area of wireless metropolitan area networks (WMA Ns). The emerging IEEE 802.16 broadband wireless access standards aim to provide high data rates over wide geographic ranges. There is also ongoing standardization effort of the eventual IEEE 802.20 mobile broadband wireless solution. This paper provides an overview of IEEE 802.16, then presents a high-level military applicability analysis, identify any technical deficiencies that may require military-specific enhancements. This analysis focuses on the areas of achievable coverage, supportable mobility, quality-of-service (QoS), and security

A common lexicon and design issues surrounding cognitive radio networks operating in the presence of jamming

This paper discusses issues surrounding the design of cognitive radio (CR) networks that must operate in the presence of jamming and hostile Electronic Countermeasure (ECM) environments. Much of the research to date in the CR community has focused on spectrum-sensing techniques and multiple-access methods. Until recently, little work had been done in the general area of wireless network security and specifically the area of performance in the presence of jamming. Discussions on this topic have been inhibited in the greater CR community by a poorly defined lexicon, which makes addressing issues such as security and performance in jamming difficult. This paper attempts to provide a basic lexicon that can be used to clearly discuss the issues surrounding CR network security and performance in the presence of jamming. This paper then goes on to discuss the various jammer threats that might be encountered by a CR network and the ramifications of these threat types on CR network design.

Advanced communications networking concepts for the National Airspace System

This paper presents terminal-area and en-route communications networking concepts that aim to help meet future aviation requirements. Future aviation applications, combined with increasing air traffic density and aging and antiquated systems, will significantly change the National Airspace System (NAS) and result in a need to develop and adopt new communications technologies. An architectural study for flight information services (FIS) performed by The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (JHU/APL), which considered both near-term and long-term technologies including terrestrial line-of-sight (LOS) systems, satellite communications (SATCOM) beyond LOS (BLOS) systems, and hybrid architectures which seek to use both types of systems, revealed that there are no existing or envisioned communications solutions that are well-suited for the application in all cases. Furthermore, studies of the terminal area reveal that there is a lack of near-term technologies that can address all requirements. This paper presents a vision of an Internet-like NAS networking architecture, and then presents mobile ad-hoc network (MANET) and wireless local area network (WLAN) concepts that could provide significantly improved networking both in the en-route and terminal areas

The Effects of Antenna Pointing Error on Bit Error Rate Performance in Mobile Directional Antenna Applications

This paper investigates the issue of antenna pointing error in mobile directional antenna applications and its impact on bit error rate (BER) performance of the link. BER performance is investigated for a variety of postulated antenna characteristics in order to determine the sensitivity of BER performance to antenna pointing inaccuracies. The method employed uses motion dynamics derived from vehicular road course tests to determine power fade profiles for various antenna types as a function of antenna pointing accuracy. These power fade profiles are then used to characterize these channels as Rician multipath channels. Finally antenna pointing accuracy is mapped directly to link BER performance for an uncoded differential phase shift keying (DPSK) waveform. This study has found that this is a complex multi-dimensional problem. Power fades resulting from pointing inaccuracy generally deteriorate for larger antennas with narrow beamwidths. However, smaller antennas are more susceptible to multipath effects due to increased beamwidth. Results of this paper suggests that, contrary to what intuition might initially suggest, larger antennas with more narrow beamwidths may actually outperform smaller antennas in mobile applications

Enabling the objective force: concepts, technologies, and challenges

This paper addresses some of the key technological needs that will enable the transformation of the army to the objective force. The objective force operates as a cohesive, mobile, lethal, survivable, and sustainable land combat force capable of rapid deployment and immediate employment upon arrival, as a unit. This is achieved through network-centric operations wherein the force is realized through the network. The communications architecture of the objective force employs a variety of communications techniques and protocols to enable the mission. Key enabling technologies include adaptive communications techniques, mobile ad-hoc networking, quality of service based networking, seamless internetworking, and seamless network management across disparate networks.

Transforming legacy network systems for use in the Army Future Force

This paper proposes a method to integrate legacy networks into the overall Army Future Force (FF) network in a useful manner. A serious technical challenge presented by such coexistence of next-generation and legacy networks is the ability to provide sufficient end-to-end quality-of-service (QoS) performance. Providing end-to-end QoS is challenging when one or more subnetworks involved in the end-to-end communication was not intended to provide QoS. Another technical challenge lies in effectively managing legacy networks. Typically, legacy networks are highly reliant on static planning, and were not designed to provide a dynamic network management capability. This paper addresses a variety of technical issues associated with the integration of legacy network systems into the Army FF, focusing primarily on QoS and network management. This paper then presents concepts that address these issues using the advanced extremely high frequency (AEHF) satellite system as a case study.

The Wireless Ecosystem

This chapter contains sections titled: Wireless Standardization Process IEEE IETF 3GPP 3GPP2 International Telecommunications Union Wi-Fi Alliance WiMax Forum Bluetooth Special Interest Group ]]>

A hybrid 802.16/802.11 network architecture for a united states coastal area network

This paper presents a concept for a United States Coastal Area Network (U-SCAN) that is comprised of IEEE 802.11, 802.16, and satellite communications technologies. The Office of Naval Research (ONR) on behalf of the National Oceanographic Partnership Program (NOPP) has tasked The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (JHU/APL) to perform an architectural study into the establishment of a United States Coastal Area Network (U-SCAN). The goal of this study is to define a wireless network architecture that can be deployed to enable contiguous coastal area network coverage for scientific, commercial, and homeland security (e.g. Coast Guard) applications within the United States Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), in a manner that is flexible, manageable, and affordable. The JHU/APL study will ultimately provide recommendations to NOPP regarding potential network architectures and technologies that could provide the desired capability, with a particular focus on commercial (both existing and emerging) technologies. This paper presents the envisioned U-SCAN architecture, and presents the envisioned technical capabilities and shortcomings of the component candidate technologies.