External interface abstraction in next generation dod satellite terminals

The High Bandwidth High Throughput (HBHT) terminal Government Reference Architecture (GRA) is being defined to support cost effective implementation of a network centric, reconfigurable, multi-band family of SATCOM platforms. The architecture is specified as a set of independent modules with well defined interfaces. The primary goal of the GRA is to enable 3^rd party development of these modules and to minimize the cost of changes to the SATCOM terminals. One of the key challenges is meeting these objectives, while ensuring that the unique characteristics (e.g. external network specific data plane and control plane protocols) of the external networks that the terminal is expected to connect to, are taken into account. In this paper, multiple abstraction approaches that mitigate the impact of these multiple terminal external interfaces are proposed.