Impact of Header Compression on Tactical Networks

Traditional tactical networks are well known for having error-prone and limited capacity links. A common technique for improving throughput and increasing spectrum efficiency over such low bandwidth links is the use of Header Compression (HC). Removing static protocol entries and synchronizing state information between a sender and receiver reduces per-packet overhead for long lived communication flows. Previous work in header compression such as the IETF's Robust Header Compression (ROHC) standard focused on single-hop unicast traffic. This is not closely aligned with tactical networks, such as NATO's Narrowband Wave Form (NBWF), which have a more challenging multi-hop multi-cast environment and a routing layer that is already highly optimized. In this work, we investigate performance gains from header compression in tactical networks. A novel multi-hop multi-cast header compression (MMHC) scheme is evaluated in a simulated tactical scenario. The use of MMHC increased the packet delivery success rate and decreased packet latency. The simulations also confirmed the significant impact to performance caused by fragmentation due to the small frame sizes in tactical networks.