An Analysis of a Distributed Switching Network with Integrated Voice and Data in Support of Command and Control

This paper explores the potential for increased transmission efficiency of military tactical command and control data links through voice/data integration. The relationship between voice and data communications as they are employed in support of Military Command is examined, and operational advantages to the integration of voice and data are enumerated. A message processing/handling paradigm of the command and control process is introduced. Past analyses are extended to include tactical data links, and an evaluation of the relative advantages of various degrees of voice/data integration over tactical data links and networks is presented. It is shown that it is generally more efficient for voice and data traffic to share voice-equivalent channels on a statistical contention basis than for voice and data to operate over separate dedicated data link voice-equivalent channels. Important exceptions to this rule are duly noted. Finally a hybrid scheme, where a thin-line capability is reserved for a special class of data and/or voice and where the remainder supports an integrated voice-data operation, is described and analyzed. This scheme is shown to be practical and to result in little loss of efficiency over the more complete voice/data integration analyzed earlier.