IEEE 802.16 broadband wireless technology and its application to the military problem space

This paper discusses the emerging IEEE 802.16 broadband wireless technologies and potential applicability to military networks. Interest continues to grow in the military network design community, for leveraging commercial technologies for use in the Global Information Grid (GIG). This is also true in the design of tactical edge networks where there is growing interest in leveraging commercial wireless networking technologies such as the IEEE 802.11 wireless local area network (WLAN) technology family. An emerging commercial capability is in the area of wireless metropolitan area networks (WAMNs). The emerging IEEE 802.16 broadband wireless access standards aim to provide high data rates over wide geographic ranges. There is also ongoing standardization effort of the eventual IEEE 802.20 mobile broadband wireless solution. This paper provides an overview of IEEE 802.16, then presents a high-level military applicability analysis, identifing any technical deficiencies that may require military-specific enhancements. This analysis focuses on the areas of achievable coverage, supportable mobility, Quality-of-Service (QoS), and security.