Communication effects server configuration capability (CC) and analysis framework (AF) for brigade combat team modernization (BCTM) simulations

The future Army relies on a wireless mobile ad hoc network (MANET) to link together the platforms of the brigade. The scale of deployment of this network is not available for field testing at design time. This fact combined with the complexity of the communication waveforms and their numerous configuration parameters demands the use of a high-fidelity simulator to assess the performance implications of design and configuration choices. The Communication Effect Server (CES), produced by Scalable Network Technologies (SNT), is such a high fidelity simulator in use by the Network Analysis and Integration Lab (NAIL). CES must be parameterized like the actual waveforms and saves a wealth of per-platform performance data to a database. The volume of the CES input data, and the volume and the distributed nature of the output data, require the use of automated tools to manage both. This paper discusses two capabilities developed by NAIL: the CES Configuration Capability (CC) for managing the input data, and the CES Automated Framework (AF) for assessing simulated end-to-end performance based on the output data.