Use of Live Virtual & Constructive (LVC) technology for large scale operational tests of net-centric systems

Abstract

The Operational Test Command's BCNIS program will provide realistic situational awareness (SA) and command and control (C2) tactical environment to support operational testing, without the costs and constraints of deploying a large number of physical units in the field. In order to fulfill the requirements for large scale testing of emerging communication technology with the constraint of limited availability of physical radio units, BCNIS is looking to leverage the concept of Live, Virtual and Constructive (LVC) test environments. This central idea of LVC involves connecting units that exist in a constructive simulation model with live and virtual lab based units to form a “hybrid” large scale network, which now can be employed for the large scale operational tests of the communication technology. Along with ‘at operational scale’ testing, LVC also allows configuration of ‘hard to setup and test’ scenarios such as urban combat scenarios: the constructive domain can be employed to simulate the urban areas and complex network layout in which the constructive units operate, while the live domain setup can be compatible with the constraints of the physical environment of the test range. This paper describes the use hardware-in-the-loop (HWIL) capability to support the use of emulated JTRS radio models in a larger scale Operational Test of GMR radios. In addition to representing some portions of the Network Under Test (NUT), the LVC representations will also be used to represent a variety of battle command system simulations and network loading tools to create the appropriate voice, video (or imagery), and tactical message loads on networks.