Future Army Bandwidth Needs and Capabilities

📖 The Scoop

Across the services, there is an increasing demand for communications capacity. For the U.S. Army, this is a result of the Army's transition to a new force structure that will be knowledge-based and network-centric. Since bandwidth facilitates communications capacity, bandwidth has become increasingly critical. To the user, high bandwidth is useful because it supports increased capacity, high-volume data exchange, short delays, and high assurance of connectivity. New technologies, commercial and military, will continue to increase available bandwidth and hence the communications capacity available to users. Based on specified requirements and proposed technologies and architectures for the future force, the capacity of communications systems planned to support the new force structure will continue to fall short of the required demand. With unlimited spectrum and unlimited budget, the Army could resolve its bandwidth issues. But these are unrealistic assumptions. Certainly, demand reduction can help close the gap between the requirements and availability of network capacity. However, it is not clear how much demand reduction is possible while retaining the information dominance that is critical for the future force. Demand reduction will need to be coupled with technology investments (e.g., satellites, UAVs, directional antennas, more radios). A number of technologies and concepts are being developed to enhance spectral efficiency, thus allowing the Army to make the best use of the available spectrum. Gaps between the supply and demand of capacity, both now and in the future, will have to be addressed by constantly reassessing demand for capacity and developing technologies that increase the supply.

Genre: Computers / Data Transmission Systems / Broadband (fancy, right?)