ATM multimedia switching

Battlefield communications systems have evolved over the years and, to some extent have been focused on voice communications as the predominant media. Recent additions have permitted the introduction of limited data and video communications. Shared situation awareness requirements indicate the balance of battlefield information will shift from a predominately voice infrastructure to a truly multimedia environment. The communications infrastructure will need to evolve to meet these changing requirements. Similarly, the end-user access of this battlefield communication system will also continue to evolve to accommodate the increasing multimedia environments. As long as the battlefield communication systems remain mobile assets, bandwidth will always be a limited commodity, regardless of improvements in the radio transmission capabilities. As such, efficiency in managing the bandwidth from an overall system perspective will yield the best results. The evolution of the Mobile Subscriber Equipment (MSE) and Combat Net Radio has, until recently, focused on voice communications. MSE, in particular, is based on a series of scalable circuit switches that also provide packet switching (overlay) and ethernet access via the Tactical Packet Network. Ir would appear proposals for near term upgrades to this system focus around improvements in the technologies, but not a wholesale change in how the core switching is accomplished. The circuit switching technology, which paralleled common channel signaling technology and Private Branch Exchange (PBX) technology,vas initially developed and designed for voice only. The overall system architecture is a merger of different technologies, PBX; ethernet, and packet switching, and services the different medias accordingly. This paper will address the evaluation of using only Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) switching technology only for all media requests, providing a different Quality of Service (QoS) depending on the type of request (e.g., voice, video, data). This paradigm allows for the full, unbiased management of the entire network and all media requests on an equal level thus having the potential for providing more overall efficient management and implementation of the tactical communications systems.