CORBA Gateway Between the JTF-ATD and the Distributed FactBase

摘要

Efforts to digitize the military have resulted in two worlds. The first is the high echelon world of distributed processing, high speed local area networks (LANs) and staff personnel. In this environment, distributed systems middleware, such as the Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA), is playing an important role in command and control systems by providing a standardized backbone upon which to build and expand. In contrast, the low echelon battlefield is characterized by low bandwidth communications, little or no dedicated communications staff, and minimal computers. The software described in this report is a gateway to provide a degree of interoperability between the Distributed FactBase (DFB), a low echelon system, and the Joint Task Force Advanced Technology Demonstrator (JTF-ATD) using the CORBA middleware standard. The gateway provides two CORBA interfaces to access the DFB. The first of these interfaces is a generic string based interface, allowing access to any DFB commands and data. The second interface is specialized for receiving unit locations from the DFB whenever they are changed. The two CORBA interfaces to the DFB effectively build a CORBA wrapper for the DFB. In this report, we measure the throughput for the various interfaces and discuss the implications for the battlefield.