Abstract
A tactical network mainly consists of software-defined radios (SDRs) integrated with programmable and reconfigurable features that provide the addition and customization of different waveforms for different scenarios, e.g., situational awareness, video, or voice transmission. The network, which is mission-critical, congested, and delay-sensitive, operates in infrastructure-less terrains with self-forming and self-healing capabilities. It demands reliability and the need to survive by seamlessly maintaining continuous network connectivity during mobility and link failures. SDR platforms transfer large amounts of data that must be processed with low latency transmissions. The state-of-the-art solutions lack the capability to provide high data throughput and incorporate overhead in route discovery and resource distribution that is not appropriate for resource-constrained mission-critical networks. A cross-layer design exploits existing resources to react to environment changes efficiently, enable reliability, and escalate network throughput. A solution that integrates SDR benefits and cross-layer optimization can perform all the mentioned operations efficiently. In tactical networks, SDR’s maximum usable bandwidth can be utilized by exploiting radios’ autonomous behavior. This paper presents a novel virtual sub-nets based cross-layer medium access control (VSCL-MAC) protocol for self-forming multihop tactical radio networks. It is a MAC-centric design with cross-layer optimization that enables dynamic routing and autonomous time-slot scheduling in a multichannel network environment among SDRs. The cross-layer coupling uses link-layer information from the hybrid of time division multiple access and frequency division multiple access (TDMA/FDMA) MAC to proactively enable distributed intelligent routing at the network layer. The virtual sub-nets based distributed algorithm exploits spectrum resources and provides call setup with persistently available k-hop route information and simultaneous collision-free transmission of voice and data. The experimental results over extensive simulations show significant performance improvements in terms of minimum control overhead, processing time in relay nodes, a substantial increase in network throughput, and lower data latency (up to 76.98%) compared to conventional time-slotted MAC protocols. The design is useful for mission-critical, time-sensitive networks and exploits multihop simultaneous communication in a distributed manner.
Highlights
The algorithm runs at each software-defined radios (SDRs) and calculates the time slot vector (TSV) for all frequency sub-bands selected by each of the sub-nets using the same
In accordance with the multihop tactical communication, we proposed a novel selfforming virtual sub-nets based MAC-centric cross-layer design
The proposed VSCL-MAC provides an efficient neighbor discovery process that keeps the nodes updated about their neighbors
Summary
To mark improvements in a tactical radio network, we propose a novel virtual sub-nets based cross-layer medium access control (VSCL-MAC) design that provides a self-forming and self-organizing intelligent approach to radio communications. It involves neighborhood discovery, which keeps nodes informed about their k-hop neighbors and helps nodes discover routes to these neighbors. Each SDR exchanges control frames to communicate intended transmission, establish routes for data transmission, and perform virtual confinement of radios, called sub-nets or subnetworks This virtual division of the network enables simultaneous collision-free communication using a hybrid of TDMA/FDMA approaches. The adapted time slot allocation for radio transmission over multiple FDMA carriers ensures throughput maximization and QoS in tactical communication
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