A Modular Approach to the Automated Testing of Common Data Link Terminals

Abstract

Common Data Link (CDL) is a communications waveform set for all Department of Defense (DoD) Services to transmit tactical data and intelligence information collected by Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) sensors to surface exploitation equipment. Bandwidth Efficient Common Data Link (BE-CDL) is an enhanced CDL waveform providing users with longer range and higher data rates between various platforms that include surface, airborne, subsurface, and man-portable platforms. The CDL waveform specification has clearly defined network performance metrics a terminal needs to satisfy in order to be compliant, but the government team at Naval Information Warfare Center (NIWC) Pacific has experienced firsthand that current vendors are not sufficiently testing their BE-CDL terminals before delivery to the government, partly because the required testing is time consuming and cost prohibitive for humans to manually perform. This results in CDL terminals not being fully compliant with the CDL specification and additional rework by the vendors, ultimately leading to schedule delays for fleet capability deliveries. This paper discusses a low-cost, automated test capability developed to measure the network performance of BE-CDL terminals as well as to analyze the results according to the waveform specification requirements. It leverages open-source software and inexpensive hardware in order to provide a low-cost test solution. One of the challenges with developing automation software for BE-CDL is that different terminals use different user and control interfaces. Some vendors are choosing not to support the use of the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) despite it being a requirement in the BE-CDL specification, and are instead choosing to develop custom control interfaces which are not interoperable between different CDL terminals. It is shown in this paper how the modular design of the automation software allows it to accommodate these different control interfaces, including support for SNMP, thus making it suitable for use with any BE-CDL terminal. This is demonstrated through the use of two different terminals: a commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) CDL terminal as well as a low-cost and low-SWaP CDL terminal developed by the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL).