Dynamic Quality of Service Management for Multicast Tactical Communications

Wireless networking is moving toward the adoption of IP protocols and away from the multitude of special-purpose tactical radios traditionally in the hands of emergency personnel, military personnel, and law enforcement. The adoption of standards, such as IP multicast, has facilitated this. IP multicast also enables recovering some of the advantages of the broadcast medium when using IP in tactical environments. However, the traditional Quality of Service (QoS) approaches for IP multicast fall short of satisfying the stringent QoS requirements in tactical environments, which typically have single-hop, line-of-sight connections. The reasons for this are (1) QoS in IP networks, frequently based on Differentiated Services, relies on routers to enforce the priorities which typically don´t exist in tactical networks, and (2) QoS for tactical users needs to be enforced at the information level, not the packet level where the loss or delay of a single packet can invalidate an entire object of information. We present strategies for QoS management for IP multicast in tactical environments that provides information and user-level QoS and addresses the specific challenges of tactical radios (such as the lack of reliable capacity information). We present our solutions in the context of a tactical information broker that provides beyond line-of-sight information management in a theater of operations.