Analysis of Link Performance Degradation from Interferences in Military Networks
Kristoffer Hägglund, Jan Nilsson, Gunnar Eriksson · 2023
In military units of the size of a brigade, a large number of frequency hopping radio networks are expected. The networks must be able to co-exist within a limited geographical area. The severity of the inter-network interference depends on a number of factors, such as available frequency space and the allocation strategy of the frequencies. To further examine this subject, we have studied how much frequency hopping VHF networks in a battalion are interfered by other networks in a brigade for a few different scenarios. In this study, the brigade was assumed to have access to a varying number of available frequency channels, and the information was spread over a varying number of frequency hops per packet. The brigade was assumed to consist of six battalions with 20 VHF networks each. The evaluation was performed using Monte-Carlo simulations with realistic path loss values obtained from a distance-dependent stochastic channel model. The results from this study show that in the worst case scenario, with access to only 200 available frequency channels, the degradation from the interferences becomes unacceptable in several scenarios. However, with access to 700 or more frequency channels, the inter-network interference is limited.