Abstract
Current military operations demand flexibility and adaptability due to the lack of communication infrastructure and the need for timely assertive decisions. To answer these challenges, we need to construct an efficient information dissemination mechanism to heterogeneous actors in the Battlefield Network (BN), which provides flexible and adaptable communications services to the military. Command and Control (C2) systems must sustain network-centric operations and guarantee C2 agility in situations in which the dynamics of the operational scenario require new network paradigms to deal with autonomous equipment, such as Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) and Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN), along with troopers and decision makers that need the right information at the right time. These entities constitute the Internet of Battle Things (IoBT), where the monitoring ability of smart things produces valuable information to be processed by peer-to-peer C2 applications. To address these issues, this work proposes a combination of Software Defined Networks (SDN) with Information Centric Networks (ICN) to meet the high level C2 requirements within deployed military mobile ad hoc networks. ICN provides an efficient data distribution mechanism and SDN controls the patterns of interaction among the IoBT heterogeneous nodes, as well as acts as an enabler for ICN to be integrated with the rest of the IP military cloud. A proof of concept of the architecture was implemented and compared with IP only and SDN-IP networks. The experiments performed to evaluate the implemented solution provided results showing a significant improvement of end-to-end delay and network load of the proposed architecture compared to conventional approaches.
Similar content being viewed by others
Data availability
The complete simulation environment for the performed experiments is available at: https://github.com/izacarias/ICNSimulations.
Notes
The complete source code of the developed system is available at: https://github.com/andredxc/ICNInstallation
The complete simulation environment for the performed experiments is available at: https://github.com/izacarias/ICNSimulations/
References
Kott A, Swami A, West BJ (2016) The internet of battle things. Computer 49(12):70–75
Peng P, Lu R, Wu L (2021) A review of the development of distributed task planning in command and control domain. In: 2021 IEEE 5th Advanced Information Technology, Electronic and Automation Control Conference (IAEAC) 5:659–663. https://doi.org/10.1109/IAEAC50856.2021.9390903
Zeng D, Min G, He Q, Guo S (2021) Convergence of edge computing and next generation networking. Peer-to-Peer Netw Appl 14(6):3891–3894
Kott A, Stump E (2019) Intelligent autonomous things on the battlefield. arXiv e-prints 1902–10086. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.1902.10086
Eisenberg DA, Alderson DL, Kitsak M, Ganin A, Linkov I (2018) Network foundation for command and control (c2) systems: Literature review. IEEE Access 6:68782–68794. https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2018.2873328
Poularakis K, Iosifidis G, Tassiulas L (2018) Sdn-enabled tactical ad hoc networks: Extending programmable control to the edge. IEEE Commun Mag 56:132–138
Zhang M, Luo J, Zhang L, Yu X, Xu T, Lei K (2021) Comparative analysis of probabilistic forwarding strategies in icn for edge computing. Peer-to-Peer Netw Appl 14(6):4014–4030
Pang K, Xiong Q (2021) Semantic modeling framework for mission-oriented military systems and combat cloud control. In: 2021 IEEE 7th International Conference on Control Science and Systems Engineering (ICCSSE) pp 200–204. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICCSSE52761.2021.9545164
Liu X, Li Z, Yang P, Dong Y (2017) Information-centric mobile ad hoc networks and content routing: A survey. Hybrid Wireless Ad Hoc Netw 58:255–268. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.adhoc.2016.04.005
Zacarias I, Gaspary LP, Kohl A, Fernandes RQ, Stocchero JM, de Freitas EP (2017) Combining software-defined and delay-tolerant approaches in last-mile tactical edge networking. IEEE Commun Mag 55(10):22–29
Leal GM, Zacarias I, Stocchero JM, Freitas EPD (2019) Empowering Command and Control through a Combination of Information-Centric Networking and Software Defined Networking. IEEE Commun Mag 57(August):48–55. https://doi.org/10.1109/MCOM.2019.1800288
Kott A, Alberts DS (2017) How do you command an army of intelligent things? Computer 50(12):96–100
Mitchell WL (2014) Nato task group sas-085 final report on c2 agility:(winner of the 2014 nato scientific achievement award). STO TECHNICAL REPORT STO-TR-SAS-085
Scott L, Marcus K, Hardy R, Chan K (2016) Exploring dependencies of networks of multi-genre network experiments. In: Military Communications Conference, MILCOM 2016-2016 IEEE 576–581.
Zuraniewski P, van Adrichem N, Ravesteijn D, IJntema W, Papadopoulos C, Fan C (2017) Facilitating icn deployment with an extended openflow protocol. In: 4th ACM Conference on Information-Centric Networking, ICN 2017, Association for Computing Machinery, Inc, pp 123–133
Wu J (2018) A multi-tiered network with aerial and ground coverage. Comput Commun 131:41–42. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.comcom.2018.07.007
Badshah J, Kamran M, Shah N, Abid SA (2019) An improved method to deploy cache servers in software defined network-based information centric networking for big data. J Grid Comput 17(2):255–277. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10723-019-09477-z
Zheng W, Yang M, Zhang C, Zheng Y, Wu Y, Zhang Y, Li J (2022) Application-aware qos routing in sdns using machine learning techniques. Peer-to-Peer Netw Appl 15(1):529–548
Fontes RR, Afzal S, Brito SHB, Santos MAS, Rothenberg CE (2015) Mininet-wifi: Emulating software-defined wireless networks. In: 2015 11th International Conference on Network and Service Management (CNSM), pp 384–389. https://doi.org/10.1109/CNSM.2015.7367387
Afanasyev A, Shi J, Zhang B, Zhang L, Moiseenko I, Yu Y, Shang W, Huang Y, Abraham JP, DiBenedetto S et al (2014) Nfd developer’s guide. Dept Comput Sci, Univ California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA, Tech Rep NDN-0021
McKeown N, Anderson T, Balakrishnan H, Parulkar G, Peterson L, Rexford J, Shenker S, Turner J (2008) OpenFlow: enabling innovation in campus networks. ACM SIGCOMM Comput Commun Rev 38(2):69–74
Khalifé H, Naves R, Thebault D, Conan V (2021) Optimized ndn forwarding in tactical networks with asymmetric radio links. In: MILCOM 2021 - 2021 IEEE Military Communications Conference (MILCOM), pp 445–450. https://doi.org/10.1109/MILCOM52596.2021.9653067
Guo X, Yang S, Cao L, Wang J, Jiang Y (2021) A new solution based on optimal link-state routing for named data manet. China Commun 18(4):213–229. https://doi.org/10.23919/JCC.2021.04.016
Dapper e Silva T, Emygdio de Melo CF, Cumino P, Rosário D, Cerqueira E, Pignaton de Freitas E (2019) Stfanet: Sdn-based topology management for flying ad hoc network. IEEE Access 7:173499–173514. https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2019.2956724
Tariq A, Rehman RA, Kim BS (2020) Epf-an efficient forwarding mechanism in sdn controller enabled named data iots. Appl Sci 10(21). https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3417/10/21/7675
Mahmud R, Toosi AN, Rodriguez MA, Madanapalli SC, Sivaraman V, Sciacca L, Sioutis C, Buyya R (2020) Software-defined multi-domain tactical networks: Foundations and future directions. 2010.10509
Hegland AM, Hauge M, Holtzer A (2020) Federating tactical edge networks: Ways to improve connectivity, security, and network efficiency in tactical heterogeneous networks. IEEE Commun Mag 58(2):72–78. https://doi.org/10.1109/MCOM.001.1900508
Boukerche A, Coutinho RW (2019) Loicen: A novel location-based and information-centric architecture for content distribution in vehicular networks. Ad Hoc Netw 93
Siracusano G, Salsano S, Ventre P, Detti A, Rashed O, Blefari-Melazzi N (2018) A framework for experimenting icn over sdn solutions using physical and virtual testbeds. Compt Netw 134
Nobre JC, de Souza AM, Rosário D, Both C, Villas LA, Cerqueira E, Braun T, Gerla M (2019) Vehicular software-defined networking and fog computing: Integration and design principles. Ad Hoc Networks 82:172–181. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.adhoc.2018.07.016
Zhang X, Zhu Q (2016) Information-centric network virtualization for qos provisioning over software defined wireless networks. In: Military Communications Conference MILCOM 2016-2016 IEEE, pp. 1028–1033
Acknowledgements
The authors thank to the CNPq (projects 309505/2020-8 and 420109/2018-8) and the Brazilian Army (project S2C2, ref. 2904/20) for the provided support.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Contributions
Jorgito Stocchero designed the work, drafted the article, and performed the data analysis and interpretation. Andre Carneiro executed simulation experiments. Iulisloi Zacharias helped in tuning the simulations, prepared Figs. 1, 2, 7 and 9, and performed a critical review of the article. Edison Freitas supervised the entire work, performed a critical review of the article, and gave final approval for publication.
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Ethics approval
Not applicable.
Human and animal ethics
Not applicable.
Consent to participate
Not applicable.
Consent for publication
Not applicable.
Conflicts of interest
The authors declare that they have no competing interests as defined by Springer, or other interests that might be perceived to influence the results and/or discussion reported in this paper.
Additional information
Publisher’s Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
About this article
Cite this article
Matiuzzi Stocchero, J., Dexheimer Carneiro, A., Zacarias, I. et al. Combining information centric and software defined networking to support command and control agility in military mobile networks. Peer-to-Peer Netw. Appl. 16, 765–784 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12083-022-01443-z
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12083-022-01443-z