Topology Algorithm Enhancements for Aerial High Capacity Directional Networks

The U.S. Department of Defense with the Joint Aerial Layer Network (JALN) program has invested significant funds to develop and deploy airborne high capacity backbone systems. These systems are intended to augment and even replace existing satellite backbones which typically offer low capacity and high latency connections. One key challenge of this technology is topology formation and maintenance with highly directional links. Previously we have presented a flexible topology management(TM) system for topology formation and coordination of aerial high capacity backbone networks [1] and various topology algorithm [2]. But the previously presented topology algorithms assumed that the number of antennas available to make connections was greater than the number of connections to be made and that all nodes for these connections were within radio range. In this paper, we present a generalized algorithm that allows nodes to discover and make only the connections that optimize the system as well as as a new feature to extrapolate orientation to improve the prediction of node position. Various dynamic scenarios are evaluated for comparison to previous static scenarios.