Implementation and field demonstration of PacketBLAST system for tactical communications
Alex Pidwerbetsky, Marc J. Beacken, Dennis M. Romain, Michael Girone · Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE · 2006
Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) wireless communications vastly expand the capacity and connectivity of communications for forces operating in challenging environments such as urban or forested terrain. A MIMO architecture called BLAST (Bell Laboratories Layered Space-Time) has been formulated to realize these capacities. We have developed a packet version of BLAST, called PacketBLAST, specifically to support high mobility, ad-hoc, tactical communications on the move in challenging environments. PacketBLAST offers a number of benefits to tactical communications. We have implemented a first-ever, end-to-end mobile, ad-hoc network (MANET) of PacketBLAST nodes and have successfully tested it in a number of field demonstrations.