SDR-Ready Standardized Waveforms for Tactical VHF and UHF Communications for NATO

Abstract

Modern concepts of operations for multinational operations within NATO and partners require air-interface interoperability for VHF and UHF tactical communications. This contrasts with the historical approach to interoperability of using wired gateways at the higher network levels. As a result of the historical trends, national combat-net radios (CNR) have been procured from industry conforming to proprietary specifications. This has made it difficult to achieve interoperability in recent deployments, and has been a barrier to implementing modern operational concepts. A Modern waveform providing interoperability for VHF and UHF tactical communications is under development by NATO, and this emerging standardized waveform specification is, importantly, free of intellectual property restrictions. This networking waveform is tailored for vehicle, manpack, and tank communications, for mobile ground-to-ground links, and ground-to-helicopter for rotary-air support links, providing long range secure tactical MANET supporting voice and data communications beyond 10 s of kilometres distance. In the future soldiers are expected to carry small radios with soldier systems waveforms, offering broadband WiFi-like MANET services, and covering only hundreds of meters. So it should be clear that the new VHF/UHF standardization agreements (STANAGs) offer complementary capabilities to those promised in upcoming soldier radios.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Sep 01, 2010
Accession Number
ADA584157

Entities

People

  • Enrico Casini
  • Michael Street
  • Philip Vigneron
  • Rick Barfoot

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Energy and Power Technologies
  • Engineered Resilient Systems
  • Human Systems

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Bandwidth
  • Digital Communications
  • Frequency
  • Intellectual Property
  • Military Communications
  • Military Operations
  • Modulation
  • Narrowband
  • Radio Equipment
  • Software Defined Radio
  • Software-Defined Radio Waveforms
  • Specifications
  • Standardization
  • Standards
  • Tactical Communications
  • Tactical Radios
  • Very High Frequency

Readers

  • Computer Networking
  • Radio communications and signal processing.
  • Systems Analysis and Design