4th Annual Tactical Radio Workshop
at WInnComm-Europe 2014

5-6 November 2014

Agenda:

3A   |   4A   |   5A   |   6A   |   7A

Tactical Radio Workshop Plenary: 

Keynotes:

• Christian Serra, OCCAR/a4ESSOR and Philippe Margot, OCCAR/a4ESSOR “Status Update on ESSOR Program”
• Charles Chedhomme, French MoD, Update on the French National Programme ”Update on the French National Programme”
  

Invited Presentation:

•  Amm. Gabrielli, Italian MoD,  “Operational Use of the SDR communications in the Land & Naval Scenarios” 

Session 3A

Keynotes: 

• Tobias Nachtsheim, German MoD, Update on the status of the German SVFuA
• George Vongas, UK MoD, SDRs integration into CIS Systems and on DSM (cancelled)
  

Presentation:

• Rick Barfoot, NATO, "Military Wireless Interoperability and Spectrum Use"

Session 4A

Presentations:

• Fabio Casalino, Selex ES, "Approach to International Markets for SDR"
• David Renaudeau, WInnForum, "International Trends in Tactical Radio Markets"
• Andrea Lorelli, ETSI, "Update on ETSI TTC RRS"

Session 5A

An approach to Test and Evaluation of Military SDR Platforms and Waveforms: the LANCERS lab

Fulvio Arreghini (CSSN-ITE, Italy), Carmine Vitiello (University of Pisa, Italy), Marco Luise (University of Pisa & WISER srl, Italy), Andrea Manco (CSSN-ITE, Italy), Giacomo Bacci (University of Pisa & Wireless Systems Engineering and Research (Wiser) Srl, Italy) and Matteo Falzarano (Italian Navy, Italy)

SDR is today one of the most appealing technology both for military and commercial market. Among the main benefits of SDR there are flexibility and portability, given by the possibility to develop Waveform (WF) independently from the platforms where they will be hosted. this makes the signal processing completely decoupled from the RF hardware. For the military community, SDR, thanks to its intrinsic flexibility, is regarded as a key enabler of interoperable communications within different scenarios: a unique SDR platforms could be employed with different waveforms for national and coalitional scenarios or even for interoperability with NGO. In the USA, The JTNC Software Communications Architecture (SCA) provided a unique reference for SDR. Based on this reference, guidelines for manufacturers and developers, as well as test tools were developed. Even if JTNC SCA is regarded as a de facto standard for the mayor European SDR programs, Europe panorama is more complex than USA one: first, the JTNC standards and procedures are not suited to be used on a European basis. In addition, several programs dealing with SDR exist, based on national or multinational initiatives and a common standard is still missing. Each program has different requirements and different policies related to security and IPRs. This rises some issues regarding how evaluation and certification process should be carried out: a number of different models for a European standardization and certifications have been proposed, identifying candidates standardization and/or certification bodies. In almost all these models, a network of test labs, located in different nations and accredited by a competent body, is foreseen as the most likely solution. These labs should have the capability and credibility to perform an evaluation process and should have mutual recognition with each other. Italian MoD is involved in SDR since 2002 and is part of the mayor multinational programs, such as ESSOR and COALWNW. In addition, as an outcome of the national SDR program, a complete family of SDR products is under development and some products are already available. In 2011 the Italian Ministry of Defense (MoD) decided to develop a national test and evaluation capability of future SDR products, and identified the Centro di Supporto e Sperimentazione Navale (CSSN) - Istituto per l'Elettronica e le Telecomunicazioni (ITE), based in Livorno, Italy, as the main technical center for its implementation, supported by a funding program running until 2015. In this paper we present the approach of the Italian Ministry of Defense (MoD) to the test and evaluation (T&E) process of military SDR. After describing key principles and choices made by Italy regarding military SDR, we will give a focus on the role of Italy in the International SDR Community. We will then describe the process of development of a national T&E capability for military SDR and the activities carried out at CSSN ITE Livorno to start the T&E Lab, named LANCERS. Finally the current situations of the activities of the LANCERS lab and future work will be presented.

Field research and evolution to Cognitive Radio

Enrico Del Re (University of Florence, Italy) and Luca Simone Ronga (CNIT, Italy)

Cognitive Radio has been considered as most promising innovation since its initial concept and definition at the beginning of this millennium. Empowered by unseen advances in several technology fields like Software Defined Radios, available computing power, fast signal acquisition and processing, low energy consumption and programmable gate arrays, as the key enablers of cognitive paradigm, its development followed a long experimental research path with pioneering projects in several areas of digital communications. Among them a fully programmable prototype modem for space communications, multi-standard radio architectures based on general purpose processors and advanced secure wireless waveforms implemented on programmable gate arrays. Since the initial concepts of Cognitive Radio a growing set of research themes started to appear, ranging from software architectures supporting re-configurability and cognition like GNU Radio, Ossie and SCA, to evolved networking concept like Cloud RAN and Software Defined Networking. We still assist to a continuous evolution of the Cognitive Radio paradigm, but its mass adoption is far from being realized. Some considerations will be provided.

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Session 6A

Challenges of SDR waveforms portability for tactical communications, an industry perspective

David Renaudeau (Thales, France), presented by Eric Nicollet, (Thales, France)

Portability of waveforms is a key concern of some SDR programs, for example the national SDR programs including national WF development to ensure interoperability between forces, or the coalition waveform programs aiming to develop waveform to be used by different nations into operations. This presentation will provide an industrial perspective of the challenges of the portability of waveforms for different use cases, enabling Multi-Waveforms, Multi-Platforms, Multi-Suppliers business models.

Current status of SVFuA and way ahead from an industry perspective

Boyd Buchin (Rohde & Schwarz, Germany) and Ruediger Leschhorn (Rohde & Schwarz, Germany)

With the project "Streitkräftegemeinsame, Verbundfähige Funkgeräte-Ausstattung" (SVFuA, radio system for joint and combined operations) the Bundeswehr set out to modernize its tactical communication system for mobile operations. With the completion of the radio sets for 2- and 3-channel-communication - together with the reference waveform FM3TR and a wideband networking waveform from a previous study - the basis for the integration of SVFuA into its surrounding system has been set. The presentation will highlight the key requirements that were decisive for the design of SVFuA and the chosen approach to portability, to enable the platform to support multiple waveforms, multiple levels of security to enable national and multinational communication and a smooth migration from legacy systems to current and future mission networks.

SCA 4.1 Update

Eric Christensen (JTNC, USA)

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Session 7A

Managing SDR in the field - Trial/Experiment/Deployment

Mario Sommaruga, Mauro Piccone (Selex ES. Italy)

Model-Based Testing for SCA Conformance Testing

Bruno Legeard (Smartesting & FEMTO-ST - UFC, France), Julien Botella (Smartesting, France), Eddie Jaffuel (eConsult, France), and Fabien Peureux (Institut FEMTO-ST & Smartesting Company, France)

The Software Communications Architecture (SCA) is a software architecture produced and maintained by the JTNC (Join Tactical Networking Center). Facing the multiplicity of the waveforms and the diversity of the platform architectures and form factors, the original aims of the SCA are to facilitate the waveform development in terms of portability and waveform deployments onto heterogeneous SDR platforms. In this paper, we present an approach using Model-Based Testing (MBT) to ensure the conformance of a software radio platform to SCA requirements. In this approach, an MBT model is developed on the basis of SCA specifications, and conformance tests and scripts are generated and then run on the targeted software radio platform. This approach has been developed within a National Research Project called OSeP, with results regarding modeling for automated test generation for SCA conformance testing. The techniques involved in this project focus on functional requirements and generate automated test scripts that are executed using a test execution environment in Java. Keywords: Software Communications Architecture (SCA), conformance testing, model-based testing, dynamic testing.

CORASMA project: main results and achievments

Christophe J. Le Martret (Thales Communications & Security & Signal Processing and Multimedia Dept., France)

CORASMA (Cognitive radio for dynamic Spectrum Management) is a 3 year duration EDA (European Defence Agency) program of category ad hoc B that ended in November 2013. The aim of the CORASMA project was to study the application of the cognitive radio concept to military tactical systems, to analyze the pros and cons and to evaluate the benefits to the tactical communication systems. This presentation will review the main salient outcomes of the CORASMA program that include the different cognitive approaches implemented and the high-fidelity simulator developed within the program to assess the performance.

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