Maritime On-the-Move Troposcatter for Resilient Naval Communications

The U.S. Department of the Navy (DoN) has made several investments into mobile troposcatter communications to support resilient communications. The Navy today relies on satellite communications (SATCOM) and High Frequency (HF) communications for beyond line-of-sight (BLOS) communications. This paper presents the results from several measurement campaigns which include a static terrestrial link, an on-the-move terrestrial vehicular link, and a maritime on-the-move ship-to-shore link. All of these rapid prototyping experimentation activities demonstrate that links over 100-miles are viable using troposcatter as a transmission modality. To the authors knowledge, the reported results represent the longest distance maritime on-the-move troposcatter link which has been demonstrated to date.