Tactical Frequency Management in QoS-Enabled Networks

The Department of Defense will deploy the first generation of future force communications networks and battle command systems over the next several years. These future force systems will have the ability to characterize and meter their offered traffic based on priority using quality of service architectures such as differentiated services and integrated services. This implementation of quality of service will allow future communications networks to process offered traffic under congestion conditions according to commanders policy and traffic priority. Network congestion can arise from a combination of reduced transmission performance or increased offered load, or both. Transmission performance, in turn, can be dramatically affected by the presence of interference. Frequency assignment systems and procedures in use today seek to prevent interference, and thus degraded transmission performance, by assigning transmission frequencies that reduce or eliminate the interference potential. This is usually accomplished based exclusively on interference thresholds that compare potential interfering energy with signal or internal noise thresholds. QoS-enabled networks may have a higher degree of interference "tolerance" because overall network performance for higher priority traffic flows may not be impacted by the interference. This paper describes how a QoS-enabled network might tolerate higher interference thresholds and thus enable tighter frequency reuse. It also offers suggestions for additional areas of study related to this subject