Tactical wireless networks: A survey for issues and challenges

As network centric warfare becoming the key concept in the modern military doctrine, tactical wireless networks have been used extensively throughout military operations for sharing crucial information among deployed units. Most tactical wireless networks are operating in a hostile environment, in which normal network operation cannot be easily achieved. In military operations, tactical wireless networks have high demands for robustness, responsiveness, reliability, availability and security. These requires continuous development of new technologies in order to cope with random behaviours of hostile environment. However, the random behaviour of tactical wireless networks under hostile environment has not been fully understood. This paper provides a survey on current issues, and research challenges in tactical wireless networks due to hostile environment. Several research gaps in performance, security, routing, and management of tactical wireless networks that are needed to be improved, are pointed out to pave the way for future research in this area. This paper provides insight understanding about the issues and trends for future development of tactical wireless networks.