Analysis of alternatives for tactical digital battlefield operation over low-bandwidth legacy radios

Abstract

As more international customers seek to upgrade their tactical land battle forces with modern digital battlefield capabilities, support for cost-effective retrofits supporting tactical battle management capabilities over legacy radios is an increasing need. As the ability to upgrade legacy radios to ones supporting high-speed tactical internet capabilities is often not possible, it is increasingly necessary to optimize the performance of the tactical battle management capability over older generations of tactical radios which offer only limited bandwidth capability and a limited number of operational modes. A model of a typical battle management hierarchy (platoon, company, battalion, and brigade) and various architectural solutions operating over low-bandwidth legacy radios are examined, such as use of dedicated radios and time-slotted architectures for multiplexing data and voice communications. For a typical set of data elements to be exchanged in the digital battlefield such as voice communications, orders, situational awareness data, and vehicle status information, the impact on overall throughput, aggregation of data, and latency of message transmission is examined. In addition, architectural solutions for addressing the critical need to send high-priority emergency messages to individual vehicles through the command hierarchy from brigade to platoon are examined with respect to message delivery latency.