Error-control for tactical ATM

In this paper we present an error-control approach for asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) transmission over tactical communication links. Error-control for ATM in the tactical environment is important, due to the lower reliability of tactical links versus that of commercial links. Unless error-control is used, the higher tactical channel bit error rates (BERs) would cause higher ATM cell error rates and cell loss ratios (CLRs) than would occur on commercial channels. Our approach separately encodes the header and the payload of a standard ATM cell for transmission in the tactical environment. For voice transmission, we use header error-control coding to provide very low cell loss ratios. For data transmission, we exploit the ARQ that typically exists in the transport layer and use payload error-control coding, in addition to the header error-control coding, to limit retransmissions. Our approach converts the standard 424-bit ATM cell into a 503-bit Tactical ATM cell with the header and payload separately encoded with BCH codes. A 5-bit synchronization character is added to the beginning of the Tactical ATM cell to produce a 508-bit frame. This approach was implemented and demonstrated at the 1996 Joint Warrior Interoperability Demonstration (JWID 1996).