Peer-to-Peer Communications for Tactical Environments: Observations, Requirements, and Experiences

Suri et al

p2p peer-to-peer tactical edge networking

@article{suri:ieee-comm2010,
  title={Peer-to-Peer Communications for Tactical Environments:
         Observations, Requirements, and Experiences},
  author={Niranjan Suri and Giacomo Benincasa and Mauro Tortonesi and
          Cesare Stefanelli and Jesse Kovach and Robert Winkler and
          Ralph Kohler and James Hanna and Louis Pochet and
          Scott Watson},
  journal={{IEEE} Communications},
  year={2010},
  month={October},
  volume={48},
  number={10},
  pages={60--69},
}

[ Overview slides ]

Tactical edge networks have unstable links, limited bandwidth, variable latency, poor connectivity due to challenging terrain, interference

Client-server architectures, including service oriented, commonly used in higher echelons

• Not applicable to tactical edge due to network limitations, single points of failure
• Different communication model, much shared/multicast/group traffic
• Locating a centralized registry can be problematic

P2P applicable to this setting

• Continue to function with partially degraded capabilities under failures
• Utilize group messaging mediums, wireless broadcast
• Natural mapping between information needs and geography, implicitly echoed by many protocols
  • Proximity/precision correlation
  • Many requests constrained by geometry, e.g., imagery of particular area

Networks typically constructed of clusters of 10--20 nodes, connected by some sort of backhaul

Resource discovery is a critical task

• As is continued awareness of that resource

Requirements

• Automatic configuration
• Bandwidth efficient peer discovery
• Peer loss discovery
• In-network data transformation to match network capabilities, resource requirements
• Adaptive dissemination
  • Many messaging models at play in tactical networks: Broadcast, unicast, groups, etc
  • Work with prioritization, update rates, relability, sequencing requirements to most efficiently meet requirements
• Disruption tolerant dissemination
  • Must handle periodic disconnects
  • Efficiently deal with loss, e.g., forward error correction, scattering
• Provenance
• Policy based control over dissemination
• Integration w/ SOA

Group messaging controls

• Frequency of advertisement adjusted based on movement, churn
• Strength of advertisement, number of hops or geographic distance to cover

Groups identified by labels with simple hierarchical structure

• mil.army.arl.hf2004.ugvs
• Nodes may belong to multiple groups, advertise differently in each
• No single view of group membership exists
• DHTs rejected due to incompatibility with churn, low bandwidth

Opportunistic listening

Nodes set their own reliability and sequencing requirements for traffic

• Receivers must manage their own reliable delivery, may have different requirements

Reliable flooding, epidemic, and heuristic dissemination protocols

• Heuristic: E.g., to favor routing through a UAV overflying the area

For large messages only metadata is transferred; receivers then request data

Comparison against JXTA because it was chosen for SOSCOE