ATM multimedia switching

Shared situation awareness requirements indicate the balance of battlefield information will shift from a predominately voice infrastructure to a truly multimedia environment. As long as the battlefield communication systems remain mobile assets, bandwidth will always be a limited commodity, regardless of improvements in the radio transmission capabilities. As such, efficiency in managing the bandwidth from an overall system perspective will yield the best results. The evolution of the Mobile Subscriber Equipment (MSE) and Combat Net Radio has, until recently, focused on voice communications. The MSE, in particular, is based on a series of scalable circuit switches that also provide packet switching (overlay) and Ethernet access via the Tactical Packet Network. The circuit switching technology, which paralleled common channel signaling technology and private branch exchange (PBX) technology was initially developed and designed for voice only. The overall system architecture is a merger of different technologies, PBX, Ethernet, and packet switching, and services the different media accordingly. This paper addresses the evaluation of using only asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) switching technology only for all media requests, providing a different quality of service (QoS) depending on the type of request (e.g., voice, video, data). This paradigm allows for the full, unbiased management of the entire network and all media requests on an equal level, thus having the potential for providing more overall efficient management and implementation of the tactical communications systems.