SDR-Ready Standardized Waveforms for Tactical VHF and UHF Communications for NATO

Modern concepts of operations for multinational operations within NATO and partners require air-interface interoperability for VHF and UHF tactical communications. This contrasts with the historical approach to interoperability of using wired gateways at the higher network levels. As a result of the historical trends, national combat-net radios (CNR) have been procured from industry conforming to proprietary specifications. This has made it difficult to achieve interoperability in recent deployments, and has been a barrier to implementing modern operational concepts. A Modern waveform providing interoperability for VHF and UHF tactical communications is under development by NATO, and this emerging standardized waveform specification is, importantly, free of intellectual property restrictions. This networking waveform is tailored for vehicle, manpack, and tank communications, for mobile ground-to-ground links, and ground-to-helicopter for rotary-air support links, providing long range secure tactical MANET supporting voice and data communications beyond 10’s of kilometres distance. In the future soldiers are expected to carry small radios with soldier systems waveforms, offering broadband WiFi-like MANET services, and covering only hundreds of meters. So it should be clear that the new VHF/UHF standardization agreements (STANAGs) offer complementary capabilities to thos