Architecture for TDM circuit emulation over IP in tactical networks

TDM circuit emulation over IP (TDMoIP) may be used as a migration step towards a full IP solution. Several different TDMoIP architectures exist offering different degrees of robustness, service quality guarantees and management. The possible architectures are presented and their pros and cons are discussed. Several tactical TDM based networks use flooding and pruning for routing and resource reservations. We propose a solution based on IP multicast that is efficient and requires no changes to the existing TDM signaling and mobility handling. The same signaling and routing scheme may be used for tactical Voice over IP (VoIP). In TDM networks, resources are reserved during call setup. Priorities are invoked if there are insufficient resources available, and one or more lower priority calls are released. We discuss different QoS architectures and mechanisms that may be used to support the military priority scheme and the stringent delay and loss requirements of TDMoIP.