Dynamic Forward Error Correction Coding to Avoid Detection in Airborne Tactical Networks

Here we present a novel routing protocol HDARP+ for airborne tactical networks that use directional antennas. HDARP+ extends the existing protocol HDARP (Hostile-Direction Aware Routing Protocol) by reducing the risk for detection by adversary aircraft even further. Compared to HDARP, the extension in HDARP+ introduces dynamic Forward Error Correction (FEC) coding. The FEC code is dynamic in the sense that different FEC codes, or no FEC code, will be used depending on the relative position of the receiver and adversary aircraft. We evaluate three different Reed-Solomon FEC codes based on three criteria: the ability to transmit in the presence of adversaries without being detected, the reduction of the effective communication bandwidth, and the implementation cost in terms of the sizes of lookup tables for encoding and decoding. We argue that (variations of) HDARP+ will be implemented in future airborne tactical networks. This paper was originally presented at the NATO Science and Technology Organization Symposium (ICMCIS) organized by the Information Systems Technology (IST) Panel, IST-205-RSY - the ICMCIS, held in Koblenz, Germany, 23–24 April 2024.