Capacity estimation and waveform assignment in military networks

Military networks are required to provide continued connectivity and capacity thus providing a means to transport a diverse set of applications ranging from short mission critical messages to constant video surveillance. However, the environments that military networks have to function are often not benign and are generally fraught with bandwidth/capacity limitations. It is however imperative for military networks to be able to continue transporting key applications despite severe capacity fluctuations. The above in turn underscores the necessity for efficient capacity estimation techniques that can be used by network planners & designers when they deploy networks. While wireless network capacity estimation is a challenging problem in itself, the heterogeneous, multi-tier networks envisioned for use by the military, combined with the unpredictable changes (caused by both natural fluctuations, and/or by malicious jamming) to the underlying network, make the problem of capacity estimation for military networks extremely hard. In this paper we present a systematic approach to estimating capacity for Military mobile ad hoc networks, and also present the power of using capacity estimation techniques to assist with the problem of waveform assignment to subnets in a Military network.