Abstract: In the past two years, the Digital Wireless Battlefield Network (DWBN) consortium that consists of HRL Laboratories, Hughes Network Systems, Raytheon, and Stanford University has participated in the DARPA TRP program to leverage the efforts in the development of commercial digital wireless products for use in the 21st century battlefield. The consortium has developed an infrastructure and application testbed to support the digitized battlefield. The basic framework for the infrastructure is the integration of satellite network (two-way VSAT) with terrestrial digital wireless cellular data network (PACS). The key components include wideband programmable basestation, smart antannas, advanced Internet services for cellular and satellite networks, and Intelligent Information Dissemination Server (IIDS). The wideband programmable basestation transforms a commercial voice-based cellular infrastructure into a data communication infrastructure with slot-aggregation and dynamic bandwidth assignment capabilities. The frequency agile and adaptive beam-forming antennas enhances the quality, range, security, and anti-jamming capabilities in cellular and PCS communications in hostile environments. Satellite-PCS-based internetworking protocols provide users mobile multicast IP services anywhere anytime and broadband reach back capability to the tactical Internet. IIDS provides bandwidth, latency, spatial, and temporal adaptation for battlefield information dissemination. The consortium has implemented and demonstrated this network system. Each member is currently producizing many of the techniques such as in DirecPC/EE and PACS networks. These new communication system hardware/software and the demonstrated networking features will benefit military systems and will be applicable to the commercial communication marketplace for high speed voice/data multimedia distribution services.
This work was funded in part by DARPA under the Technology Reinvestment Program. The views and conclusions contained in this document are those of the authors, and should not be interpreted as representing the official policies, either expressed or implied, of DARPA or the U.S. Government.
Correspondence: skdao@hrl.com