Tactical Wireless Communications and Networks: Design Concepts and Challenges

Chapter 4

MAC and Network Layers in Tactical Networks

So far we have been focusing on the lower layers of the protocol stack, which include the physical layer and the data link layer (DLL). These were presented within the context of tactical wireless communications and the tactical networking information theory construct. At the end of Chapter 3 we touched upon network coding and presented a case study for transport layer coding. In this chapter, we will review some of the important concepts of the network layer. Essentially we are now addressing packets that flow up and down the protocol stack layers and between different nodes. We are now facing a range of different issues, in addition to the physical limitations of the communications channel, which we addressed in the previous chapters. In this chapter we address issues such as how the transmission media resources are shared among different nodes in a tactical wireless subnetwork; what design concepts should be followed to manage these shared resources; what is the best way to model packets arrival and departure in queues; how queue overflow can cause packet loss; and how to overcome catastrophic events which can occur in tactical wireless networks.