Tactical Wireless Communications and Networks: Design Concepts and Challenges

6.2 Tactical GIG Waveforms

In the GIG architecture presented above, the most important and complex waveform is the WNW. The WNW and SRW waveforms of the JTRS program made IP-based tactical radios a reality. While WNW and SRW work at the brigade level, the WIN-T program at the upper echelon uses two different waveforms that are designed for the HAIPE encrypted core and form a WAN. These two waveforms are the HNW and NCW. We will briefly cover these two waveforms as well.

Since the Link-16 waveform has been in use for decades, many of the details mentioned in Chapter 5 have been made public over the years. The same does not apply to the IP-based MANET waveforms from the JTRS program. This section is constructed with the information that was made available in the public domain at the time of writing this book. We will focus on the challenging MANET problems such as cross layer signaling, physical layer resource allocations, and topology control and on how they are addressed by the JTRS program.

6.2.1 Wide-Area Network Waveform (WNW)

The WNW is an extremely complex waveform. The protocol stack of the WNW is introduced in Figure 6.3. The plain text IP layer gives the radio user access to an Ethernet port where VoIP terminals and IP COTS applications can be plugged in. One can plug an Ethernet switch into this port and form an entire plain text subnet. The HAIPE encryption layer uses an embedded processor for encryption that can adhere to multiple versions of HAIPE. A WNW node can support ...