Range Extension Using Opal in Open Environments

Military and humanitarian missions may occur in a wide variety of environments, they are often deployed in short time scales, and must be robust to a variety of challenges, both natural and man-made. In order to operate in such scenarios, organisations need flexible, robust and high performance communications systems. This paper presents the DST Group Opal system supporting a MANET incorporating ground vehicles, a UAV and high performance digital radios, in a real geographic environment. Measures of network connectivity and throughput were taken in conjunction with the physical response of network devices to benign and hostile challenges.