Designing Software Defined Small Form Fit Radios for JTRS Networking

The design of Joint Tactical Radio System (JTRS) Small Form Fit (SFF) radio sets is aimed at embedded communications applications for dismounted soldier systems and unmanned and unattended platforms such as; Intelligent Munitions Systems (IMS), Unattended Ground Sensors (UGS), Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV), and Non-Line of Site Launch System (NLOSLS) Precision Attack Missiles (PAM). The platform constraints on which these SFF sets are integrated drive the radio design to meet highly controlled size, weight, and power (SWaP) tolerances. These SWaP tolerances, in turn, severely limit the processing capabilities and memory allocations and are a significant challenge to both the SFF hardware and waveform application developers. The concept of operation for each SFFs host platform creates a different type of networking challenge. Characteristics of these domains such as battery operations and low gain antennas along with requirements for integration into a secure Network Centric Future Combat System (FCS) environment create additional challenges that the SFF and the Soldier Radio Waveform (SRW) developer must jointly address. The SRW software application has recently been selected as the key networking waveform to meet the dismounted soldier and FCS unattended and unmanned platform needs using JTRS SFF sets. This paper will outline some of the foreseeable challenges related to SFF and SRW internetworking domain design and development. Also discussed will be the major tradeoff considerations between SFF hardware design and networking functionality.