SOA and Wireless Mobile Networks in the tactical domain: results from experiments

The NATO research task group IST-118 titled “SOA recommendations for disadvantaged grids in the tactical domain” is addressing the challenge of implementing the Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) paradigm at the tactical level by providing guidance and best practices in the form of a Tactical SOA Profile. The group will conduct identification and feasibility assessments of possible improvements of the Tactical SOA Profile, over a series of live and emulated experiments. In this paper, we describe our first experiments in applying SOA Web services to mobile nodes that are connected using Wireless Broadband Mobile Networks (WBMN) in the tactical domain. The experiments involved components provided by various nations, including radio hardware equipment, the Publish/Subscribe messaging service and NATO Friendly Force Information (NFFI) (as our functional service). We measured the system performance at service and physical (radio) levels in the presence of network disruption. We conclude by presenting the results of the experiments and a view of future work.