A practical guide to modern airborne networking

This paper reviews recent experiments with airborne networking, including Bold Quest 2007 and Joint Expeditionary Force Experiments (JEFX) in 2006 and 2008, to examine the different options for building airborne networks given the current state of technology and installed equipment base. This includes combining data between legacy data-links and the IP world of applications, deploying IP applications designed for more robust networks, and airborne network management. Three different general architectures are examined for their inherent strengths and weaknesses in functionality, implementation, and extensibility. The author of this paper, from the Air Forcepsilas Electronic Systems Center(ESC), implemented network management and assessment tools to collect network performance data at multiple terrestrial and airborne points in the network to gather the data presented, along with application logs, and user comments. This paper is intended for readers with a cursory knowledge of military data-links and IP networks.