A distributed trunking mechanism for ad hoc VHF tactical networking

Current tactical communication systems require new approaches to provide adequate support for the growing number of services on a digital battlefield. The RF Communications Division of Harris Corporation has been developing a networking solution to meet these requirements. As a part of this solution, a robust, fully distributed protocol for VHF multi-frequency channel access has been designed. This protocol satisfies the mobility, capacity and integrated voice and data transfer requirements of the tactical environment without a fixed infrastructure. This paper presents an overview of the proposed distributed trunking mechanism, including network and node behavior and data movement. Throughput and delay performance of the protocol obtained using OPNET network in realistic tactical environments is presented.