Thoughts on adjunct cell phone support within JTRS network

Abstract

The Services have advocated the need for adding support of COTS cellphones for both combat and non-combat voice and multimedia communications for the warfighters. This paper presents a system architecture and a suite of protocols that may be used to effectively integrate COTS cellphones (dual-mode phones and smartphones), Wi-Fi Access Points and a call processing engine over the Joint Tactical Radio System (JTRS) wireless network to support non-combat uses. In this arrangement, a cellphone can initiate a call using Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) over a Wi-Fi access network and the JTRS core network. In addition to the Wi-Fi Protected Access and JTRS security mechanisms, the SIP signaling and user data are protected by Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol, and the voice media by Secure Real-Time Transport Protocol (SRTP). The proposed system supports both localized and long distance calls as well as access to other commercial services over the Internet via the JTRS-GIG gateway.