Comparison of two transmission strategies for use in survivable radio networks

The authors describe work examining two architectures for use with dynamically changing broadcast networks. The first architecture is a single channel network with a single transmitter and a single receiver per communication node. The second architecture allows the utilization of many frequencies and requires one transmitter and five receivers per node. Using both Monte Carlo techniques and topological analysis, throughput performance of the two architectures is characterized across several structural variables. The sensitivity of the performance to these variables is examined and explained for both architectures, as well as the significance of these sensitivities for realistic military environments. It is shown that using an equivalent equipment comparison between the architectures the multichannel system has better throughput performance than the single channel system across all topologies. In addition, since global connectivity information is not required for efficient operation in the multichannel architecture, it should be able to respond more quickly to changing conditions