Tactical networks should be optimized to deliver the maximum amount of useful information from which decisions may be made. This requires that both the quality and amount of information be considered. The quality of information may be judged by both intrinsic and contextual attributes. We define the operational information content capacity (OICC) as the measure of the amount of useful information a network can deliver. In this paper we discuss several ways to quantify OICC and determine the residual information content capacity in a network based on a set of information requests. We first define functions which relate specific metrics to the quality of a piece of information to be used for a certain purpose. From this we determine the amount of data required to deliver the information to its recipient and the resultant "information bits" which can be derived. We then provide two illustrative examples highlighting the use of OICC.

Date Published: 23 May 2011
PDF: 7 pages
Proc. SPIE 8047, Ground/Air Multisensor Interoperability, Integration, and Networking for Persistent ISR II, 80470U (23 May 2011); doi: 10.1117/12.884002

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 8047:
Ground/Air Multisensor Interoperability, Integration, and Networking for Persistent ISR II
Michael A. Kolodny; Tien Pham; Kevin L. Priddy, Editor(s)