Maximizing the Probability of Message Delivery Over Ever-Changing Communication Scenarios in Tactical Networks

Abstract

This paper introduces a stochastic model to maximize the probability of message delivery over ever-changing communication scenarios in tactical networks. Our model improves modern tactical systems implementing store-and-forward mechanisms organized in a hierarchy of layers for messages, IP packets and radios. The goal is to estimate the optimum redundancy for the user data-flow to overcome packet loss during changes in the link data rate, including disconnections. Experiments in a VHF network illustrate the numerical results from our model using messages with different sizes over two patterns of data rate change.

TNT: A Tactical Network Test platform to evaluate military systems over ever-changing scenarios

“…Therefore, the minimum packet loss (P. Loss) observed in MG reached about 24 %, PRW with 4.8 % and GM reaching about 3.7 % of packet loss. Although RWP does not contain disconnections, we observed some packets loss of about 1.6 % which can be explained by the probability of packet loss increases in low data rates as calculated in [3] using experimental results with the same VHF radios.…”

“…The main question addressed in these investigations is how to guarantee that the models are creating enough variations in the communication scenarios to test the system's ability to handle unpredictable conditions including link disconnections and burst of messages. The investigation in [3] introduces a multi-layer stochastic model to compute the probability of message delivery. The goal is to maximize the probability of message delivery by adding redundancy to the user data flows.…”

“…The present study is also motivated by the lessons learned in our previous investigations defining models to create everchanging communication scenarios [3]- [8]. The goal is add a variety of reproducible scenarios and to provide a software platform to support the test of tactical systems over real military radios.…”

TNT: A Tactical Network Test Platform to Evaluate Military Systems Over Ever-Changing Scenarios

“…After introducing TNT's mechanisms to create ever-changing user data flows and network conditions, the next step is to design a military system in order to test the platform over different scenarios as illustrated in Figure 1 (2). In previous investigations, we observed that the limited buffer size of military radios combined with the ever-changing network scenarios and user data flows (say message size and time distribution) results in buffer overflow [16], [38]. Therefore, we created a mechanism that can handle the radio buffer overflow by dynamically shaping the user data flow, and controlling the buffer usage within a given threshold.…”

“…Although RWP does not contain disconnections, we observed packet loss of about 1.6 %. The low packet loss happens because the probability of losing packets increases as the link data rate decreases, as calculated in [38] using experimental results with the same VHF radios.…”