Application of QoS management techniques to new naval combat systems

In this article we present new challenges about naval embedded networks, for those: to become both telecommunication networks and tactical networks, to support the evolution from the classical platform centric concept toward a new "naval force" centric concept where assets are linked together to acquire, distribute and process the data. To be able to provide a naval force all the information it needs, new integrated networks will have to deal with sensors and targets acquisition, weapon delivery and wide real-time data fusion. In this way, linked sensors will be used into distributed radar systems as well as into sonar systems. We introduce the new concept of an extended combat system (extended to a whole naval force and coast based sensors networks) and show that the future challenge will be to keep end-to-end QoS (from ship to shore-based decision centres) through heterogeneous interconnected networks including Internet.