Third-generation technologies for HF radio networking

Second-generation HF automation (e.g., MIL-STD-188-141A) provided a sufficiently robust, reliable, and interoperable link establishment technology to produce a resurgence of interest in HF radio for long-haul and mobile voice networks beginning in the 1980s. With the addition of a robust data link protocol, the second generation technology was extended to support data applications over HF. By the mid-1990s, however, the growth of HF networking revealed the need for techniques that reduce overhead traffic so that the limited HF spectrum could support larger networks and more data traffic. This paper describes a "third generation" of HF radio automation technology that provides significant advances in modem technology, link establishment, network management, and data throughput. One goal of the third-generation technology development effort for MIL-STD-188-141B was to efficiently support bursty data traffic in peer-to-peer networks with hundreds of stations. The constraints that this imposes on linking, message delivery, and routing table maintenance improve the performance of star-topology and smaller peer-to-peer networks as well.