SDN-Enabled Tactical Ad Hoc Networks: Extending Programmable Control to the Edge

Modern tactical operations have complex communication and computing requirements, often involving different coalition teams, that cannot be supported by today's mobile ad hoc networks. To this end, the emerging software defined networking (SDN) paradigm has the potential to enable the redesign and successful deployment of these systems. In this article, we propose a set of novel architecture designs for SDN-enabled mobile ad hoc networks in the tactical field. We discuss in detail the challenges raised by the ad hoc and coalition network environment, and we present specific solutions to address them. The proposed approaches build on evidence from experimental evaluation of such architectures and leverage recent theoretical results from SDN deployments in large backbone networks.