According to a report on the military aerospace website on November 10, 2020, US Air Force researchers are looking to the industry for the next generation of highly directional networked air-level communication technology for tactical airborne networking. The Air Force Research Laboratory Information Bureau reissued a broad agency announcement on the next-generation airborne directional network plan on November 6. The
directional network concentrates a large amount of radiated energy on the intended receiver to resist interference and increase link capacity. It can also reduce the stray energy radiated in the direction of unexpected receivers, reduce interference and reduce the possibility of interception or eavesdropping by the enemy. The
directional airborne tactical network is different from the land-based mobile ad hoc network (MANET), and there are huge differences between the two communication modes. Compared with MANET technology, airborne tactical networking involves entirely airborne systems, which does not have the power consumption and device limitations faced by battery-powered handheld devices used by MANET. However, although not as serious as handheld operations, airborne platforms still face challenges in terms of size, weight, power consumption, and cost (SWAP-C), as well as completely different vibration and environmental requirements. The different loss characteristics of
airborne tactical network make it have a larger coverage area than MANET, and enable any participant in the network to be directly connected. This increases the threat of interference, and different altitudes and environmental conditions affect signal propagation. The
jet fighters and other high-performance aircraft move much faster than ground vehicles, and may need to be able to compensate for Doppler effects, propagation time, and synchronization. Jet aircraft may also need apertures and RF electronics that can quickly switch and point. Other issues of
airborne network include topology management and scheduling; network discovery while maintaining low detection probability; ad hoc network join/leave; directional routing and media access control; anti-destroy airborne communication technology; modular and open architecture system ; Intelligent information service; flexible directional aperture and multifunctional RF system.
US Air Force researchers hope to obtain white papers from the industry for research, development, integration, testing, evaluation and delivery of the next generation of highly directional networked air-level communication technologies.
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