Future Army Bandwidth Needs And Capabilities

As the Army migrates to a new force structure that is knowledge-based and network-centric, the issue of bandwidth, which facilitates communications capacity, has become increasingly critical. Increases in the number of network participants create shortages of bandwidth supply. The authors examine the Army's projected demands for communications capacity and describe steps that can be taken to address the likely gap between demand and available supply. Bandwidth becomes increasingly critical to the Army as it migrates to a new force structure that is knowledge-based and network-centric. To the user, high bandwidth is useful because it supports high-volume data exchange, short delays, and high assurance of connectivity. Communications networks, however, face severe scaling issues with increases in the number of network participants. This results in a shortage of bandwidth, or network capacity. New technologies, commercial and military, will continue to increase bandwidth availability to mobile users, but demand is likely to continue to exceed supply. The authors examine the Army's projected demands for communications capacity and describe steps that can be taken to address the gap between demand and supply, which include techniques such as higher frequencies, more efficient routing protocols, adding a vertical node, and improving operational management of the network Preliminaries......Page 0 Preface......Page 4 Contents......Page 8 Figures......Page 12 Tables......Page 14 1. Introduction......Page 30 2. Current and Near-Term Capabilities......Page 44 3. Future Communication Needs and System Capabilities......Page 54 4. Ways to Increase Capacity......Page 72 5. Major Findings and Recommendations......Page 86 APPENDIX......Page 92 References......Page 126 The Army is moving toward network-based communications in which all users (sensors, shooters, commanders, etc.) are interconnected as part of an information grid (see Figure 1.1).