Military training network with admission control using real-time analysis

Military training radio networks typically consist of large numbers of mobile nodes and have to provide real-time (RT) communication between these nodes. This paper introduces a method on how to manage radio resources and provide Quality of Service (QoS) guarantees for heterogeneous traffic by using admission control, deterministic queuing, and scheduling methods. The proposed solution is based on the use of a RT feasibility test in the admission control and earliest deadline first (EDF) scheduling and queuing. This deterministic solution handles heterogeneous traffic through a novel combination of RT downlink and two types of RT uplink dynamic scheduling mechanisms. The uplink scheduling consists of a control packet based mechanism for sporadic RT traffic and a periodic short-latency mechanism for periodic RT traffic. The method presented in this paper is investigated by computer simulation, evaluating its performance and determining the maximum number of nodes supported, given a worst-case user scenario. To the best of our knowledge this is the first centralized protocol designed for a military training network providing application-specific RT support for heterogeneous traffic.