Improved data rate robustness of U.S. MIL-STD-188-110C appendix D wideband HF waveforms

The recently completed US MIL-STD-188-110C Appendix D specifies a new family of Wideband HF Waveforms. These new waveforms occupy bandwidths from 3 kHz to 24 kHz in increments of 3 KHz and provide user data rates between 75 bps and 120,000 bps. This enhancement to the standard addresses the need for higher capacity and throughput in today´s HF communication systems needed to support IP based data and applications such as video and detailed situational awareness. An added benefit of this new family of waveforms is that different bandwidths can be used to make tradeoffs in robustness, latency and performance. For example, given a particular data rate, it may be possible to select a wider bandwidth waveform that can provide the same throughput but requiring less SNR and/or latency while at the same time providing more robustness to multipath and fading. This paper presents an overview of the new wideband HF data waveforms and investigates this additional dimension now available to HF communication systems.