The strategy of secure communication originating from the NNEC (NATO network Enabled Capability) concept assumes the use of effective and safe transport mechanisms at various levels of the heterogonous C2 (Command and Control) NATO systems. SCIP (Secure Communication Interoperability Protocol) is the basic solution introduced by NATO for secure communication of different network devices through networks with restricted bandwidth. SCIP technology is designed to provide interoperable end-to-end connectivity in a variety of communication systems, from military radio communication, traditional telephone communication system through satellite communication channels to VoIP and various types of mobile telephony standards. It is designed to operate at the application layer with minimal dependency on the characteristics of the lower layers. The implementation of the SCIP protocol in various devices requires the unification of transmission and signaling procedures as well as the methods of coding the speech signal. Therefore, the main challenge associated with this issue is the provision of high security, high availability and high quality of service (QoS). The implementation of any encryption algorithm in nowadays heterogenous networks with restricted bandwidth can lead to degradation of the voice quality due to increased loss packets and packet latency. This paper will investigate how the end-to-end SCIP encryption impacts on QoS of voice communication. The quality of voice call is assessed in terms of lost packet ratio, latency and jitter with and without SCIP algorithm. Research is performed using the MultiDSLA tester and PESQ and POLQA methods. The results of laboratory tests indicate what effect SCIP encryption-based security has on the voice call quality.

Date Published: 27 March 2019
PDF: 8 pages
Proc. SPIE 11055, XII Conference on Reconnaissance and Electronic Warfare Systems, 110550E (27 March 2019); doi: 10.1117/12.2524539

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 11055:
XII Conference on Reconnaissance and Electronic Warfare Systems
Piotr Kaniewski, Editor(s)