Real-time radio emulation environment for combat net radio networks

Mobile ad hoc networking (MANET) is an emerging technology for the narrow-band tactical radio networks. MANET does not require any network infrastructure, which is a major advantage in tactical networks. However, the implementation of tactical MANET is known to be a challenging task. The lack of proper testing tools makes protocol debugging and optimization a laborious task. In this paper, we propose a new radio emulation environment based on recently proposed Platform for Real-time radiO and Stack Emulation (PROSE) that enables tactical MANET developers to emulate the radio environment and selected parts of the protocol stack. With PROSE protocol developer can test the MANET system in specified scenarios and obtain performance results and trace files that help identifying potential bottlenecks. In addition, we will demonstrate how the proposed radio emulator could be utilized to test and verify proper operation of a real MANET protocol implementation.