Proceedings Article | 30 April 2007
KEYWORDS: Prototyping, Unmanned aerial vehicles, Intelligence systems, Surveillance, Receivers, Control systems, Network centric warfare, Image compression, Warfare, Sensors
Effective network-centric warfare requires information exchange with suitable quality of service (QoS) to meet the warfighter's
needs. Information delivered too late or with the wrong resolution, form, or precision is insufficient for the user
to perform his role in a warfighting scenario. Key characteristics of network-centric warfare environments, as instantiated
by the Global Information Grid, are dynamic reconfiguration and interoperability, in which Communities of Interest
(COIs) can be formed and reformed dynamically to respond to real-time threats and unfolding situations. There is a need
for a QoS management capability that can support the dynamic interoperability and real-time requirements of networkcentric
warfare. In order to be effective, this QoS management capability must manage the production, delivery, and
consumption of information within available resources, mediate competing demands for resources, and adjust to dynamic
conditions. In this paper, we describe the architecture for a QoS Management System (QMS) that works alongside
information management systems in dynamic COIs. The QMS provides QoS management (including resource management
and quality of information management) in dynamically changing, mission driven environments for interoperating
assets within a COI and for assets and resources shared among COIs. The QMS provides mechanisms for QoS policy
specification, QoS enforcement and monitoring, dynamic resource allocation, and application adaptation in dynamic
COIs. It is based on a layered architecture that maps mission requirements to QoS policies and enforcement. We describe
the QMS architecture, prototype implementation, demonstration, and evaluation. Based on these experiences, we also discuss future research directions.
