Communication modeling for a combat simulation in a network centric warfare environment

Effective and efficient information sharing in a warfare environment is a key feature of the Network Centric Warfare (NCW) concept, and a combat simulation model should reflect this key feature. Most existing combat simulation models adopt a simplified communication model, which may lead to overestimating an actual level of communication performance. On the other hand, while providing accurate assessment of communication performance, a low-level, detailed, engineered model for communication tends to be overly sophisticated and computationally intensive to incorporate in typical combat models. In this paper, we propose a communication model in the context of an engagement-level of NCW combat simulation. In particular, we use a propagation loss model to determine a success or failure of individual communication attempts. We also define a set of model parameters to characterize various communication networks deployed in a battlefield. Preliminary simulation experiments and their results are presented to illustrate the proposed modeling framework.