Middleware for coordinating a tactical router with SOA services

In this paper, we introduce an architectural concept for the adaption of SOA-technology (in particular Web services) in order to enable operational use in the tactical domain (typically featuring low-bandwidth communication links with high delays and frequent disruptions). For this purpose, an Enterprise Service Bus specially tailored for the tactical domain (a “tactical ESB”) is used as a technical infrastructure for the SOA. On the network side, a “tactical router” provides connections to different radio technologies (e.g. VHF, HF based radios, satellite communication, etc.). A specially tailored cross-layer middleware is introduced to coordinate ESB (infrastructure) services with the tactical router. The middleware uses a specific state exchange mechanism in order to increase the efficiency of the overall system. Therefore, it obtains characteristics of the network environment and takes advantage of them in order to improve the quality of data transfers. In addition, a prototypical implementation of the architectural concept is briefly described. There, the designed components and interfaces were prototypically implemented and coupled with RuDi (an Apache CXF - based ESB by IABG [4]) and an in-house developed prototype of a tactical router.