Defense Communications Agency Research Articles

Financial and Administrative Infrastructure for the Early Internet: Network Maintenance at the Defense Information Systems Agency.

Popular and scholarly histories of computer networking often focus on technical innovation and the social impact of those innovations. These histories are marked by a contradiction, namely, failing to explain the existence of the infrastructure that they must ultimately use as evidence for the success of innovation, and the conduit of its social impact. The story of the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Agency's (DARPA's) Arpanet, and the role of both in the invention of the modern Internet, is a central archetype of this genre. Taking our lead from recent work in infrastructure and maintenance studies, we propose a methodological and ontological inversion of Internet historiography-centering our explanation around the infrastructure that is assumed but not explained in innovation-centric accounts. We do so by focusing on the U.S. Defense Communications Agency (DCA; now the Defense Information Systems Agency), which is traditionally cast, contra DARPA, as a conservative enemy of innovation. We explore its maintenance of the financial and administrative infrastructure necessary for the Arpanet to function as a contribution to broader histories of network infrastructure.

EVOLUTION AND RATIONALE FOR UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE ELECTROMAGNETIC PULSE PROTECTION STANDARD

ABSTRACTThe United States (US) Department of Defense (DoD) Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) protection standard offers a solid basis for protecting commercial communication, data, and control facilities. Because of the standard's shielded barrier and test requirements, it is not surprising that there is a strong temptation within industry and government to dismiss the MIL‐STD 188‐125 approach in favor of less rigorous protection methods. It is important to understand that US DoD EMP protection standard for fixed facilities, MIL‐STD‐188‐125, reflects an evolution by trial and error that spanned a period of decades beginning with the acquisition of the Minuteman Missile System in the 1960s. In fact, one of the main motivating factors for developing the standard was that system developers in the Air Force, Army, Navy, and Defense Communications Agency (now Defense Information Systems Agency) and the Federal Emergency Management Agency tried less technically‐sound approaches that failed in their effectiveness, testability, and maintainability. This paper revisits the development of the US DoD standard and explains its provisions and underlying technical rationale. The paper's objective is to enable the public officials and engineers involved in planning and implementing EMP protection for critical infrastructure facilities to avoid the pitfalls encountered in the past and use the best practices available to achieve low risk protection designs that can be maintained over the entire lifecycle of critical infrastructure systems.

Host Tables, Top-Level Domain Names, and the Origin of Dot Com

From as far back as 1971, the Arpanet Network Information Center (NIC) at Stanford Research Institute (now SRI International or SRI), located in Menlo Park, California, maintained the official Arpanet Host Table. This work was carried out under contract to DARPA. Later, the same activity was carried out by the NIC for the Defense Communications Agency (DCA) and the Defense Data Network (DDN), of which the Arpanet eventually became one segment. In this Anecdote article, Elizabeth (Jake) Feinler describes the organizations and people involved in the early efforts at naming and addressing, in particular the transition to the domain naming system (DNS) and the origin of the top-level domains (TLDs).

Tabu search—Uncharted domains

The setting could have come from a Hollywood science fiction movie. A dozen figures, a handful in uniforms of the U.S. Strategic Air Command (SAC) and a slightly larger contingent variously in business suits and in shirtsleeves, were gathered around a large mainframe computer whose blinking lights signaled a run in progress. The computer run — on an early70s behemoth that represented the state-of-the-art of the period—was seeking a response to a scenario of a first wave nuclear strike on the U.S.. Each of us present had a security clearance at the level of Secret or higher. Mine, a lowly Secret clearance, had come via an engagement with the Defense Communications Agency at the other-worldly SAC installation buried beneath Cheyenne Mountain. My involvement in the present project was the result of a labyrinthine trail that had wended its way through my earlier associations with research groups at Carnegie Mellon University and at the University of California, Berkeley to reach me at my present post at the University of Colorado. The computer scenario currently in progress was engaged in testing a new type of search procedure applied to the objective of discovering an appropriate counter to the hypothetical nuclear strike. The conditions surrounding this objective, which hinged on satisfactorily meeting a collection of prioritized sub-goals, were embodied in a complex combinatorial optimization model. For the search routine to be successful, an effective retaliatory response had to be identified in less than 5 minutes. Experience suggested such an undertaking might not be easy. Previous efforts, utilizing a diverse array of approaches implemented by the “shirtsleeves crowd” surrounding me — a computer science and OR group from a California Think Tank organization engaged by SAC for this project — had been unable to generate an effective response in under 47 minutes, and the resulting solution had been deemed marginal. A concerted initiative to remedy this outcome had, reasonably or unreasonably, wound up on my doorstep and confronted me with the challenge of designing an approach that might do better. The California Think Tank group did not conceal their doubts about the likelihood of my pulling this off, and had openly

Providing an analytic structure for key system design choices

The design of a system, especially a system architecture, requires the balancing of multiple performance parameters with the system cost and other implementation issues. Multi-attribute utility theory provides a structured, coherent framework for conducting an analysis in which system designs are evaluated on multiple performance parameters. This paper describes the application of multi-attribute utility analysis to the design of the Worldwide Digital Signal Systems Architecture (WWDSA), a telecommunications system, by the United States' Defense Communications Agency (now called the Defense Information Systems Agency). The advantages of using multi-attribute utility theory during the system design are highlighted. In addition, we discuss several key analytical issues that led to this application being a success in the eyes of the decision makers.

The Department of Defense communications in the 21st century

The Department of Defense (DoD) is one of the biggest users of communications in the world. Communications systems are used not only for the administration of the Department, but, most critically, for the command and control of force structures. To this end, the Defense Communications Agency (DCA) strives to ensure that the Department's missions are carried out with state-of-the-art communications systems. In this article an architecture is postulated to achieve the Department's objective of rapid, reliable, secure exchange of information at an affordable price. The goal is one system for all communications services (data, voice, video, imagery) including Office Automation (OA) needs.This article was written with the view toward communications systems which are commonly referred to as fixed systems used on military bases and for long-haul transport of information, rather than tactical communications systems used on mobile platforms such as armored vehicles, ships, and airplanes. However, due to advances in VLSI and flexibilities afforded by new transmission frameworks and switching fabrics, the concepts described in this article could apply to tactical systems as well.The views contained in this article are those of the author and should not be interpreted as necessarily representing the official policies, either expressed or implied, of DCA and DoD.

Objective speech quality measures based on human audition

To accurately assess the quality of a speech transmission or coding system generally requires subjective ratings obtained by experiment. An alternative measurement procedure which would be highly desirable would involve an objective assessment automatically performed by computer. Using a large data‐base consisting of many distortions as well as the corresponding quality ratings, we have attempted to predict subjective quality based on psychoacoustic models. Such properties as intensity perception, frequency resolution, and time integration were incorporated. One of the most interesting results involves the fact that quality of distortions involving waveform coding and additive noise were well modeled by psychoacoustic parameters. However, the quality of more complex distortions, such as those produced by linear predictive coding, was best predicted using parameters (e.g., growth of loudness) at substantial variance with psychoacoustic test results. One conclusion is that complex distortions are not well characterized by simple measures. However, many of our measures outperformed more traditional measures by a large margin. [Work supported by the Defense Communications Agency.]

Integration of Voice and Data in the Wideband Packet Satellite Network

The Wideband (packet satellite) network is an experimental 3 Mbit/s communications system developed under sponsorship of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the Defense Communications Agency. This system is being used to evaluate the use of packet transmission for efficient voice communication, voice conferencing, and integration of voice and data over a satellite channel. Each station in the Wideband network consists of an earth terminal (dedicated 5 m antenna plus associated IF/RF equipment), a burst-modem and codec unit, and a station controller. Station controllers provide interfaces to host computers (including packet speech sources) and manage the allocation of the satellite channel on a TDMA demand-assigned basis. TDMA demand-assignment is implemented using a reservation-based packet-oriented protocol capableof handling traffic at multiple priority levels. The channel protocol provides a reservation-per-message mode of service (datagrams) to support transmission from bursty traffic sources and a reservation-per-call mode of service (streams) to support traffic with more regular arrival statisticS (e.g., vioce). A distributed scheduler running in every station controller eliminates the need for a central control station and minimizes network transit delay for datagram transmission as well as stream creation, modification, and deletion. In this paper we describe the protocols and mechanisms upon which the Wideband packet satellite network is based.

Operational Evaluation of a Voice Concentrator Over AUTOVON Interswitch Trunks

This paper describes results of test and evaluation of a commercial voice concentrator applied to AUTOVON interswitch trunks between Feldberg, Germany and Ft. Detrick, MD. By virtue of time assignment speech interpolation (TASI) techniques, the voice concentrator provided approximately a 2-to-1 compression of voice channels onto trunks, with a configuration of 17 channels onto nine trunks selected for this AUTOVON application. Tests consisted of: 1) signaling performance characterization through the voice concentrator, 2) voice channel characterization of the nine selected trunks before and after cutover of the voice concentrator, 3) performance characterization of data signals operated through voice concentrator channels, 4) traffic data collection and analysis, and 5) user subjective evaluation. Test results indicated acceptable performance for the intended application, which was limited primarily to voice signals. Since completion of the testing and subsequent analysis, the Defense Communications Agency (DCA) has accepted the voice concentrator system for operational use with AUTOVON IST's in the Defense Communications System (DCS).

Austere C 3 graphics

The MITRE Corporation, a not for profit Federal Contract Research Center (FCRC), has been involved in Command, Control and Communications (C 3 ) Systems Engineering for the past twenty years. MITRE's program in support of the Defense Communications Agency (DCA)/Command and Control Technical Center (CCTC) involves planning and systems engineering for the Worldwide Military Command and Control System (WWMCCS). Included as components of the WWMCCS are survivable command centers such as the National Emergency Airborne Command Post (NEACP). MITRE has been involved in the system engineering functions of the NEACP Automatic Data Processing (ADP) system and other austere command posts. A portion of MITRE's overall system engineering activities included the design of an austere graphics capability for the NEACP ADP system. This paper explains the constraints, problems, needs and solutions to this engineering project. The goal of this paper focuses on selecting a suite of graphics capabilities that can be implemented in an austere computer environment and which can support generic C 3 ADP graphics requirements. This paper also focuses on highlighting graphics capabilities that satisfy C 3 display needs but are realizable in an austere computer system.

MILSATCOM Architecture

The Military Satellite Communications Systems Office (MSO) of the Defense Communications Agency has recently prepared an architectural framework for the evolution of military satellite communications systems through the end of this century. The realization of the goals of the architecture should provide significantly enhanced military utility to three functional classes of users. The strategic forces would be directed and managed through a two-way, highly survivable, jam-resistant Strategic Satellite System (SSS). The Tactical Satellite System (TACSATCOM II) offers a jam-resistant, low probability of detection, communications system for employment of ground mobile forces as well as tactical Naval and Air Forces. The future Defense Satellite Communications System (DSCS III U/IV) will provide the high data-rate users with increased jam resistance to perform their missions. These satellite systems will use higher frequency bands (EHF), on-board processing, and improved antenna techniques. To implement the EHF technology in a coherent fashion, the MSO has also prepared a Technology Development Program Plan which identifies and plans for the needed R&D efforts.

Experimental evaluation of voice conferencing techniques

The requirement to support voice conferences in which some participants have only narrow-band speech communication capability prevents the use of the conventional signal summation (bridging) technique. In order to evaluate the relative acceptability of alternative signal selection techniques, a conferencing simulation facility has been constructed, and a series of experiments has been designed and carried out. The effects of conference size, communication delays, and voice encoding techniques have been investigated. Conference control based on speech activity detection has been compared with control using push-to-talk switches or tone keys. Both centralized and distributed control algorithms have been simulated. Test scenarios have been developed that provide both task performance measurements and subjective judgments of conferencing system adequacy. Results indicate that simple broadcast protocols are generally preferred over more complex schemes and that signal selection techniques can perform comparably to signal summation. [This work was sponsored by the Defense Communications Agency for the Department of Defense.]

Contributors To This Issue

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Additional informationNotes on contributorsMartin FischerMARTIN J. FISCHER is an Operations Research Analyst with the Defense Communications Engineering Center in Reston, Virginia. He received a BA in Mathematics from the University of New Hampshire, an ms in Mathematics> from Florida State University and an mas and PH D in Operations Research from Southern Methodist University. One area of his interest is in the application of stochastic processes to the analysis of telecommunications systems of interest to the Defense Communications Agency. He is a member of TIMS and ORSA, as well as being our adjunct faculty member of the Operations Research Program at the American University.E.G. CoffmanE.G. COFFMAN, JR. is Professor, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of California at Santa Barbara, California 93106. He obtained his PH D in engineering at ucla in 1966, while working as a Programmer Analyst with System Development Corporation. Since then he has been at Princeton, Penn State, and Columbia universities. His research interest is in mathematical modelling and analysis of computer operation. Professor Coffman is Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of the Association for Computing Machinery.J. LabetoulleJ. LABETOULLE is on the research staff of Institut de Recherche d’lnformatique et d’Automatique, Le Chesnay, 78150 Rocquencourt, France.F. JensenF. JENSEN received his dea from Bordeaux in 1973, and afterwards worked as a Research Assistant at the University of Montreal. At present he is working at Gaz de France in Paris.F.N. StewartN.F. STEWART received his phd in Computer Science from the University of Toronto in 1968. At present he is an Associate Professor in the Departement d’Informatique at the University of Montreal. He has just completed a sabbatical year at the Transportation Development Agency, Transport Canada.Alan SaipeALAN L. SAIPE has degrees in Engineering Science (BA SC) and Operational Research (MA SC and PH D) from the University of Toronto. As well as he has spent several years in both line and staff management positions in industry, having held the positions of Manager, Industrial Engineering and then Director, Operations at Connaught Laboratories Limited, Canada’s largest biologicals manufacturer. Dr Saipe is now an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Administrative Studies at York University in Toronto where he teaches various courses in or/ms and Business Policy. His research interests fall broadly in the area of or applications and practice; of late his research has been focused primarily in the fields of Production and Operations Management and Risk Analysis. Dr Saipe has numerous research publications and conference presentations in his field. Dr Saipe is a member of cors (the Canadian Operational Research Society), TIMS, and ORSA as well as other professional groups.Ronald ArmstrongRONALD D. ARMSTRONG received a PH D in Operations Research from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in 1974. Since that time he has been an assistant professor J at the University of Texas at Austin’s Business School. Dr Armstrong’s primary areas of research are integer programming and statistical estimation theory. He is the author of about twenty published papers which have appeared in such journals as SIAM Journal on Numerical Analysis, Management Science, Operations Research, infor, and Naval Research Logistics Quarterly.Wade CookWADE D. COOK holds a doctorate in Operational Research from Dalhousie University, and is currently an associate professor of Management Science in the Faculty of Administrative Studies at York University. He is a consultant with the Department of National Defence and the Ontario Ministry of Transportation and Communications as well as with various private organizations. Dr Cook’s primary research interests are in the areas of Multiple Criteria Decision Making, Consensus Formation in Ranking Problems and Game Theory. He is the author of about twenty published papers which have appeared in numerous journals including infor, Operations Research, Public Choice, and Naval Research Logistics Quarterly.Grant MartinGRANT E. MARTIN holds a Bachelor of Mathematics degree in Combinatorics and Optimization from the University of Waterloo. He is currently working on a Masters degree in Optimization from that university. During the past three years he has been an employee, through the University of Waterloo Co-operative program, with Health and Welfare Canada, Agriculture Canada, and the Department of National Defence. Mr. Martin’s current research interests are in the area of Machine Scheduling and Computer Based Machine Scheduling Algorithms.Harry WongHARRY K.T. WONG is a PH D student at the University of Toronto. He is currently working on a topic that involves applying techniques of Artificial Intelligence to the modelling of interactive information systems.John MylopoulosJOHN MYLOPOULOS received his PH D from Princeton University in Electrical Engineering in 1970. Since then he has been associated with the University of Toronto where he is now associate professor of computer science. His research interests include Artificial Intelligence and applications of Artificial Intelligence methods to Database Management.Ahmed BelkaouiAHMED BELKAOUI is an Associate Professor of Accounting in the Faculty of Management Sciences, University of Ottawa. He holds a BA in business administration from the University of Tunis, Tunisia, an mba from the University of Illinois, and a PH D (1973) in Accounting from Syracuse University. His research interests focus on the empirical analysis of the effectiveness of internal and external accounting communications. He is the author of many articles published in, among others, Accounting Review, Financial Management, Journal of Business, Financial Review, Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Finance, and Journal of Business Finance and Accounting.Claude HeninCLAUDE G. HENIN est né à Liège (Belgique) en 1946. Après des études d’ingénieur et de mathématiques à l’Université de Liège, il obtint une maîtrise et un doctorat en administration industrielle à la Carnegie-Mellon de Pittsburgh. Il est présentement professeur agrégé à la Faculté des Sciences de la Gestion de l’Université d’Ottawa. Il a publié plusieurs articles de recherche opérationnelle, dont plusieurs traitent de fiabilité dans Management Science, Naval Research Logistics, et infor.Michel BourqueMICHEL BOURQUE is a PH D student in Computer Science at the Université de Montréal, where he has previously received a B SC and an M SC in Mathematics. His research activities have included simulation modelling of socioeconomic systems, multidimensional analysis applications to psychology, and discrete optimization. His forthcoming thesis deals with heuristic solutions to the Steiner problem and their application in transportation and taxonomy.Jacques FerlandJACQUES A. FERLAND has been associate professor of Operations Research in the Département d’informatique at the Université de Montréal since 1971. In 1971 he received his PH D in Operations Research from Stanford University. He also obtained an M SC in Statistics from Stanford University in 1971, an M SC in Informatique in 1967 and a B SC in Mathematics in 1966 from the Université de Montréal. His main research interests include networks flow theory, large scale mathematical programming, and generalized convexity.Jean-Marc RousseauJEAN-MARC ROUSSEAU est professeur adjoint au département d’informatique et recherche opérationnelle de l’Université de Montréal. Il a obtenu un B SC en mathématiques (1969) et un M SC en informatique (1970) à cette université et un PH D en recherche opérationnelle du Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1973). Ses principaux intérêts de recherche sont dans les applications de la r.o. dans le domaine de la santé et des transports.

Subjective effects of anomalies in packetized speech transmission

When speech is transmitted in a packet-switched network the variability in packet delays inherent in such a net tends to produce occasional anomalies or “glitches” in the output speech when packets fail to arrive at the destination in a timely fashion. While the frequency of occurrence of these anomalies can be minimized at the expense of buffering and increased overall speech delay, it is likely that a practical network design would represent a compromise which allowed some degradation of the output speech under worst case load conditions. To provide some basic data on the subjective effects of such anomalies a series of listening and communicability tests has been undertaken using speech in which anomaly effects have been introduced by simulation techniques. Anomalies resulting from packet losses due to delay dispersion as well as variation in average delay are introduced at controlled rates in simulated networks using a variety of speech encoding techniques and packetization strategies. Preliminary test results will be presented and a tape with examples of some anomaly effects will be played. [This work was sponsored by the Defense Communications Agency for the Department of Defense.]

Perceptual correlates of affection reaction to processed speech

A specially prepared semantic differential rating form was used to compare the perceptual and affective reactions of two groups of listeners to speech processed by a representative selection of digital voice communication systems. One group consisted of professional laboratory subjects. The other was composed of military personnel who were routinely involved in military communications. Factor analysis was used to identify the perceptual correlates of the acceptance or affective reactions of the two groups to the various systems. Five orthogonal factors accounted for the systematic component of rating variance in both cases. Although the two groups discriminated with respect to the same perceptual parameters, they valued certain of these parameters differently when rating the systems from the standpoint of acceptability. This finding provided the basis for the development of a practical method of predicting the operational acceptability of communication systems from the responses of laboratory subjects who may not share the operational population's valuation of the various perceptual parameters. It is necessary only that the two groups share the capacity to discriminate systems with respect to these parameters. [Work supported in part by the Defense Communications Agency.]

Residual excited linear predictive coder

We describe a linear predictive vocoder excited by the speech residual with the transmission bit rate below 8k bits/sec. The features of the residual excited linear predictive (RELP) vocoder system are as follows: (1) no pitch extraction is needed; (2) the bit rate is relatively low; and (3) the system is simple for hardware implementation. The RELP vocoder combines all the attractive concepts of linear predictive coding (LPC), voice excited vocoder (VEV), and adaptive delta modulation (ADM); that is, the system employs LPC for a better spectral representation of the vocal tract, the concept of VEV for bandwidth compression of excitation signal, and ADM for its simplicity of implementation and ability of accurate coding of a low-frequency signal. The LPC residual is generated by a feed-forward LPC analyzer, is low-pass filtered at cutoff frequency 800 Hz, and then is coded by ADM. At the synthesizer the decoded residual is passed through a spectral flattener and its output is finally fed as an excitation signal to the LPC synthesizer to obtain synthesized speech. The quality of synthesized speech is, in our opinion, reasonably good compared with those of other vocoders with the same bit rate. [The study was supported by the Defense Communications Agency.]

Automated Technical Control (ATEC)

Automated Technical Control (ATEC) is sponsored by the Rome Air Development Center (USAF) with participation and guidance from Defense Communications Agency, U.S. Army, and U.S. Navy. Technical Control is the function within the military communications organizations that provides quality control of communications provided to users of the service. Activities performed by Technical Control include circuit quality assessment, alternate routing, new circuit engineering and implementation, recordkeeping, and status reporting. Upgrading will be accomplished by automating many of the functions within Technical Control, providing the operator with capability presently lacking, and relieving him of many time-consuming recordkeeping tasks, thus freeing him for more productive tasks that require his deductive or analytical abilities. Automated Technical Control (ATEC) is entering the development stage at the present time, having been the subject of extensive study and analysis for the past several years. Automation is achieved through judicious use of a family of process control computers, special automated test equipment, automated switching equipment, and operator consoles. The consoles are used interactively by the operators to accomplish performance monitoring, fault isolation, circuit rerouting, equipment substitution, recordkeeping, and reporting. Primary emphasis in the system design has been to require the computer to do things it does best and allow the man to do things he does best.

COMMAND CONTROL–THE NAVY'S LINK TO GLOBAL STRATEGY

Naval Engineers JournalVolume 75, Issue 1 p. 31-37 COMMAND CONTROL–THE NAVY'S LINK TO GLOBAL STRATEGY CAPTAIN FRED W. KITTLER USN, CAPTAIN FRED W. KITTLER USN THE AUTHOR Graduated U. S. Naval Academy, June 1939. Served in Cruiser and Destroyer Forces in 1939, 1940, 1941. Graduated U. S. Naval Postgraduate School Electronics Engineering Course. 1945. Following Postgraduate education served in technical assignments at New York Naval Shipyard. Office of Naval Research, Atlantic Fleet, and Office of Naval Attache, London. Completed Resident Course at Industrial College of Armed Forces in 1958. Following a Research and Development assignment in the Bureau of Ships was one of the initial commissioning detail for the Defense Communications Agency. Returned to Bureau of Ships in August 1961 to head the Command and Control Systems Project Office.Search for more papers by this author CAPTAIN FRED W. KITTLER USN, CAPTAIN FRED W. KITTLER USN THE AUTHOR Graduated U. S. Naval Academy, June 1939. Served in Cruiser and Destroyer Forces in 1939, 1940, 1941. Graduated U. S. Naval Postgraduate School Electronics Engineering Course. 1945. Following Postgraduate education served in technical assignments at New York Naval Shipyard. Office of Naval Research, Atlantic Fleet, and Office of Naval Attache, London. Completed Resident Course at Industrial College of Armed Forces in 1958. Following a Research and Development assignment in the Bureau of Ships was one of the initial commissioning detail for the Defense Communications Agency. Returned to Bureau of Ships in August 1961 to head the Command and Control Systems Project Office.Search for more papers by this author First published: February 1963 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1559-3584.1963.tb04655.x AboutPDF ToolsExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Volume75, Issue1February 1963Pages 31-37 RelatedInformation