Design Tradeoffs for Frequency Hopped VHF Net Radios

Army Combat Net Radio (CNR) poses a unique set of operational and equipment requirements when compared to those of non-military users. A new generation of radios presently in development must provide all the capabilities of the current radios plus several new ones, notably an active ECCM capability. This paper illustrates how the ECCM design is driven by the electronic warfare threat and by the deployment peculiar to CNR. Considerations in selection of frequency hopping as the ECCM technique are discussed, as well as the design trade-offs necessary to achieve a balance between the conflicting requirements of performance against the threat, self-interference and interference to non-hoppers, and user-transparent synchronization.