Abstract:
Current military forces are developing, purchasing, and fielding tactical wideband radios capable of connecting wirelessly to each other to form a mobile ad-hoc network (MANET), an autonomous communications system where each wideband radio serves as a mobile node. Wideband MANET radios offer tremendous new capabilities, including high data rates and automatic traffic relay, but have large electromagnetic spectrum requirements. Meanwhile, wireless traffic from civilian, joint, and coalition networks will increasingly clutter the electromagnetic spectrum, and militaries will continue to operate in environments with restrictions on spectrum use. Efficient allocation of available spectrum is required to ensure military forces are able to fully utilize new MANET radios, yet current methods of allocation are woefully inadequate.
