Personal communications services: improving theater deployable communications for the 21st century

Personal Communications Services (PCS) may be the key ingredient for vastly improved military communications capabilities at the turn of the century. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) defines PCS as a family of mobile or portable radio communications services which could provide services to individuals and businesses and be integrated with a variety of competing networks ... the primary focus of PCS will be to meet communications requirements of people on the move. Today's generation of Theater Deployable Communications, which provides joint tactical communications to deployed forces, is the Tri-Service Tactical Communications (TRI-TAC) system. A description of TRITAC's family of equipment, network topology, typical employment, and critical limitations is presented in this thesis. Five commercial Mobile Satellite Services (MSS) are described as viable candidates for augmenting existing communications systems. Cellular design principles such as frequency reuse, cell splitting, channel access methods, and propagation factors are also addressed. Finally, a framework for comparison of the candidate MSS systems is proposed as a baseline for further studies into the most beneficial implementation of PCS into theater deployable communications systems for the future.

Grantor dc:publisher

Monterey, CA; Naval Postgraduate School

Year dc:date.issued

1994

Author dc:creator

• Cournoyer, Ronald C.

Advisors dc:contributor.advisor

• Jones, Carl R.
• Boger, Dan C.

Statement dc:rights

• This publication is a work of the U.S. Government as defined in Title 17, United States Code, Section 101. Copyright protection is not available for this work in the United States.

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/10945/30839

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:calhoun.nps.edu:10945/30839