ATM technology offers the same technical advantages to the military user as to the civil user. ATM offers the additional advantage to the military user in that the considerable research and development investment in ATM is shared with the large non-military marketplace. The use of ATM in the tactical arena presents some unique challenges. These include the performance issues associated with error prone radio links which are inherent to the military tactical environment, issues associated with network dynamics where the infrastructure and users are mobile, and service characteristics such as priority and pre-emption which are not inherently supported by ATM but currently part of military communication systems. This paper discusses the work carried out by DERA to address these challenges, including ATM "link hardening", some performance modelling results and an approach to the priority and pre-emption issue.
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