Link management in the Air Force airborne network

The envisioned Air Force airborne network (AF AN) circa 2020 will most likely consist of a backbone network and many edge networks. The backbone nodes are expected to experience semi-permanent connectivity whereas the edge network nodes may experience rapidly changing connectivity in an ad-hoc manner. In addition, nodes may join and leave any edge network at fairly rapid rates. In this environment there is a need to manage link connectivity, node membership and the overall network topology in such a way as to minimize the impact of rapidly-changing connectivity and node network membership on the performance of user information transfers. This rapid detection/response management of links, nodes and the overall topology is defined as link management (LM), This paper describes the LM approach being taken for the AF AN circa 2020. The following topics are addressed: (a) high level LM functions from a network perspective, (b) LM architecture alternatives based on the extent of centralization/decentralization employed, and (c) a proposed LM functional allocation between platform and terminal equipment. Finally, this paper identifies sample issues pertaining to the successful development of an AN LM system, along with possible methods to resolve these issues.