The optimal employment and defense of a deep seaweb acoustic network for submarine communications at speed and depth using a defender-attacker-defender model

• Main Author: Hendricksen, Andrew D.
• Other Authors: Carlyle, W. Matthew
• Published: Monterey, California: Naval Postgraduate School 2013
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10945/37637

Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited === The need for submarines to execute communications at speed and depth (CSD) is a vital link in our nations and our allies defense network. A promising method to do this without limiting the inherent stealth and advantage of submarines is to utilize Deep Seaweb, an underwater acoustic communication network. The challenge is to be able to optimally employ such a network in a constantly changing environment. In particular, our goal is to develop a network that is resilient to a given number of adversary attacks that can disable individual nodes. To this end, we build and solve a defender-attacker-defender (DAD) optimization model that provides the optimal location of repeater nodes that maintains as much of the function of the network as possible, even after a worst-case attack. We analyze four initial basic network configurations and compare the resulting optimum node placements when the network is not subject to attack, when the network is subject to two attacks, and when the flow of each network configuration is completely blocked by attacks.