Future Trends in Commercial Wireless Communications and Why They Matter to the Military

The rapid evolution of commercial wireless communications technology has resulted in capabilities that far surpass their military counterparts in many ways. Thus, the military community is increasingly interested in leveraging commercial technologies and techniques to address its communications needs. In fact, one need look only at today’s trends in the commercial domain to understand tomorrow’s military solutions (and their challenges and limitations). Because of this reality, the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) is dedicated to maintaining mastery of commercial technologies and involvement with the commercial wireless standards communities. By maintaining this expertise, APL can leverage these technologies and solutions to meet sponsor needs in affordable and effective ways and can also understand and manage the risks and limitations of these technologies. By actively participating in the standards bodies, APL experts believe they can help tailor these technologies to better meet sponsor needs. This article provides a brief overview of the evolution of commercial wireless broadband communications. It also examines some of the key wireless technology trends that will likely drive the development of the next generation of wireless solutions and affect the military solutions of tomorrow. have become so integrated in our daily lives, even in the remotest parts of the world. Cell phones, tablets, laptops, smart TVs, and other devices provide a level of connectivity to the world and media content that we could not have imagined in the recent past. This trend continues to accelerate, making it difficult to imagine the type of wireless society we might find in 20 years. It is not surprising that the military community would want to leverage this rapidly growing capability to address its own communications needs. The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) recognizes the power of commercial technologies and approaches INTRODUCTION The ways people and devices connect to the Internet have changed significantly in recent years. Numerous highly capable wireless networking technologies have been developed and widely deployed. Today’s commercial wireless communications landscape is fueling a revolution in the way people access and share information as the “wireless Internet” continues to take form. Users are embracing these new capabilities and are demanding additional capabilities to satisfy their needs. This symbiotic relationship is creating a startling evolution in wireless networking capabilities in the commercial domain. It is still surprising how wireless technologies Commercial Wireless Communications Trends and the Military Johns Hopkins APL Technical Digest, Volume 33, Number 1 (2015), www.jhuapl.edu/techdigest 7 and attempts to leverage them to provide affordable and effective solutions for its sponsors. This article discusses the relationship between the commercial and military domains, some of the key factors driving commercial development, some of the key technology trends in the commercial communications landscape, and APL’s role in this space. INCREASING MILITARY RELIANCE ON COMMERCIAL WIRELESS TECHNOLOGIES: PARADIGM SHIFT Military wireless communications systems have historically been based on proprietary technologies that have been designed to meet a stringent set of performance requirements. These systems are often designed to operate in highly disadvantaged environments where equipment will be exposed to harsh environmental elements such as sand, dust, dirt, and water, as well as extreme temperature variations. These wireless communications systems also have historically been designed to provide extreme levels of security to protect data that may be sensitive to national security, tactical operations, or strategic goals. This security requirement includes not only protecting information in transit through wireless networks but also protecting the wireless devices themselves, as they may operate in scenarios in which they are prone to capture. Indeed, the military domain faces many challenges that are more stringent than those in the commercial domain. With all that said, however, there has been a growing trend over the past 25 years for the increasing use of commercial technologies, techniques, and equipment to solve problems in the military wireless communications domain. This is due to multiple factors. During the Cold War era, it was common for military technology to be ahead of technology in the commercial sector, with military technologies often advancing the state of the art. However, with reductions in military spending and research and development since the Cold War era, the military community sometimes lags the state of the art. In many cases, military networks are often based on technology from the 1970s or 1980s. Today it is common for the commercial domain, through its enormous advantage of economy of scale, to advance the state of the art in wireless communications. Consequently, interest in and use of commercial technologies has been steadily increasing within the DoD community for decades. This trend was bolstered in 1994 by The Perry Initiative. Instituted by William Perry, U.S. secretary of defense from 1994 to 1997, this 1994 DoD memorandum mandated a heavier reliance on commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) technologies to solve DoD communications needs. Then, in 1996, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) requested a 1-year study on wireless communications to be conducted by the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board of the