A central requirement in test and training events is that the Test Engagement Network (TEN) provide sufficient coverage and bandwidth to ensure:
- Personnel and platforms participating in the event can be monitored
- All traffic needed to monitor the participants, both live and constructive, is delivered to the Exercise Control (ExCon) in a timely manner for accurate computation of Real Time Casualty Assessment (RTCA)
- The energy requirements of the various transmitters and other mobile equipment deployed as part of the TSN do not exceed their battery capacity during the course of the OT. Tower locations have a direct impact on the power required for satisfactory network service quality.
For a successful test or training event, the access points or towers of the TEN must be located such that they can meet the preceding requirements. On most ranges, towers are an expensive asset to deploy and monitor during the test, and as such they must be managed optimally - using more towers than needed will drive up the cost of the event and having insufficient coverage may raise concerns on the validity of the data collected during the test.
The primary goals of the Integrated Planning of Tactical, Test Support, and Tactical Engagement Network (IPT3N) project, is to provide an automated capability for planning and optimization of range network laydowns to meet specified coverage, bandwidth, and power consumption requirements.
This paper will describe the use case driving the development of continuous planning of the range networks and the algorithms used to improve coverage and bandwidth. We will discuss test planning challenges and how they can be overcome by support technologies like IPT3N. We will use data from a TEN deployment using TAPETs towers from a previous Network Integrated Evaluation (NIE) at the White Sands Missile Range (WSMR).