<title>Design, implementation, and use of a real-time distributed simulation testbed for mobile communication networks</title>

Abstract

There is a need to design, develop, and test new mobile communication networks for military applications. The hardware cost to outfit a single node may be quite high. Much of the cost is in rf hardware, modems, and encryption devices. Replicating such costs over several nodes and adding the cost of maintaining a field site can quickly lead to unacceptable budget levels. One solution to this problem is, in the initial development and testing phase, to develop network communication systems that can operate with either real or simulated transmitters, receivers, modems, etc. This paper describes how we accomplished this task for the development of a high frequency, data/voice (D/V) mobile network. The underlying, distributed, real-time simulation software evolved from Sim++2. On top of this we built a simulation package to model mobile communication networks. Software for the SubNet Controller (SNC) of the hf D/V Network was developed to work with these simulation packages as well as to work with real rf equipment. The SNC software was tested in a 6-node network in which some of the rf equipment was simulated and some was real. The resultant system provides a testbed for examining the performance of command and control systems that must operate over mobile rf communication systems.© (1997) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.