Application of Burst Switching to a Tactical Communications Environment

This paper presents an overview of a tactical communications network architecture based on the burst switching technology. Future tactical communications requirements within the context of the Air Land Battle 2000 environment are addressed and an architecture which takes into account the advantages of burst switching technology is developed. The architecture is then used in a scenario which addresses those requirements as well as requirements for interoperability with the tactical radio and backbone transmission systems. The objective is to provide a conceptual approach which offers improvements to tactical communications systems by using the latest low delay, high speed switching techniques.