Cross-layer design for military networks

This paper discusses the issue of cross-layer design for military networks, highlighting some of the promising results in the area of cross-layer design and performance benefits of such approaches, and the need for cross-layer design techniques in the realization of end-to-end (E2E) quality-of-service (QoS). Cross-layer design is a rapidly growing research area that is considered a very promising approach for realizing effective wireless internetworking. There is a growing consensus within the network research community that effective communications across wireless networks requires non-traditional network design approaches. This is particularly true in providing QoS in support of multimedia applications or in supporting energy-constrained sensor networks. This has led to the rise in the interest of cross-layer design. This paper first discusses the issues associated with QoS, across both wired and wireless networks. The paper then provides an overview of cross-layer design and a summary´ of several of the cross-layer techniques that exist within the commercial and network research domains. Lastly, this paper discusses the application of these approaches to military networks and identifies key technical issues that require further research and development before these techniques to be a more viable option for the military network design community