Capacity planning to meet QOS requirements of joint battle management and command and control (BMC2) applications

The U.S. Department of Defense is moving from net challenged communications to having fully integrated net-enabled operations and warfare. Shifting from vertically integrated systems and application-specific tactical data links to a horizontally integrated capability that exchanges data via application layer and Internet Protocols_over radio-frequency communication paths imposes significant operational and engineering challenges and opportunities. In the present vertically integrated systems, quality of service requirements (e.g., acceptable loss rates, delay, delay variation, and throughput) are met through a combination of techniques such as circuit switching, forward error detection and correction, redundancy, and over-provisioning. Transitioning to weakly connected, multi-hop, packet-switched radio-frequency networks forces the development of application layer protocols that, in turn, depend upon quality of service guarantee mechanisms that interact with transport, network routing, and media access control protocols. Capacity planning (i.e., understanding QoS requirements, assessing network performance, and adapting the application to network constraints) plays a critical role in designing QoS mechanisms that enable applications to meet their performance requirements. Moreover, during operations, capacity planning becomes an integral part of the application itself when it is designed to adapt to the changing performance status of the network. In providing a better understanding of capacity planning and its role in developing robust applications, this paper discusses quality of service requirements (i.e., capacity, latency, jitter) and guarantees necessary to enable tactical battle management and command and control functionality with a mobile ad hoc network. It also discusses candidate quality of service mechanisms necessary to achieve both mutual consistency and distributed resource management requirements. Finally, the paper illustrates a capacity planning model for joint BMC2 applications with a presentation of the communications analysis done for DoD's Single Integrated Air Picture (SIAP) program to understand SIAP communications requirements and better design QoS guarantee mechanisms for the SIAP application