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Combining information centric and software defined networking to support command and control agility in military mobile networks

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Abstract

Current military operations demand flexibility and adaptability due to the lack of communication infrastructure and the need for timely assertive decisions. To answer these challenges, we need to construct an efficient information dissemination mechanism to heterogeneous actors in the Battlefield Network (BN), which provides flexible and adaptable communications services to the military. Command and Control (C2) systems must sustain network-centric operations and guarantee C2 agility in situations in which the dynamics of the operational scenario require new network paradigms to deal with autonomous equipment, such as Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) and Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN), along with troopers and decision makers that need the right information at the right time. These entities constitute the Internet of Battle Things (IoBT), where the monitoring ability of smart things produces valuable information to be processed by peer-to-peer C2 applications. To address these issues, this work proposes a combination of Software Defined Networks (SDN) with Information Centric Networks (ICN) to meet the high level C2 requirements within deployed military mobile ad hoc networks. ICN provides an efficient data distribution mechanism and SDN controls the patterns of interaction among the IoBT heterogeneous nodes, as well as acts as an enabler for ICN to be integrated with the rest of the IP military cloud. A proof of concept of the architecture was implemented and compared with IP only and SDN-IP networks. The experiments performed to evaluate the implemented solution provided results showing a significant improvement of end-to-end delay and network load of the proposed architecture compared to conventional approaches.

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Data availability

The complete simulation environment for the performed experiments is available at: https://github.com/izacarias/ICNSimulations.

Notes

  1. The complete source code of the developed system is available at: https://github.com/andredxc/ICNInstallation

  2. The complete simulation environment for the performed experiments is available at: https://github.com/izacarias/ICNSimulations/

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank to the CNPq (projects 309505/2020-8 and 420109/2018-8) and the Brazilian Army (project S2C2, ref. 2904/20) for the provided support.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Informatics, Federal University of Rio Grande Do Sul (UFRGS), 9500 Bento Gonçalves Av, Porto Alegre, 91509-900, RS, Brazil

    Jorgito Matiuzzi Stocchero, Andre Dexheimer Carneiro, Iulisloi Zacarias & Edison Pignaton de Freitas

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  1. Jorgito Matiuzzi Stocchero
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  2. Andre Dexheimer Carneiro
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  3. Iulisloi Zacarias
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  4. Edison Pignaton de Freitas
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Contributions

Jorgito Stocchero designed the work, drafted the article, and performed the data analysis and interpretation. Andre Carneiro executed simulation experiments. Iulisloi Zacharias helped in tuning the simulations, prepared Figs. 1, 2, 7 and 9, and performed a critical review of the article. Edison Freitas supervised the entire work, performed a critical review of the article, and gave final approval for publication.

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Correspondence to Jorgito Matiuzzi Stocchero.

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Matiuzzi Stocchero, J., Dexheimer Carneiro, A., Zacarias, I. et al. Combining information centric and software defined networking to support command and control agility in military mobile networks. Peer-to-Peer Netw. Appl. 16, 765–784 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12083-022-01443-z

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