• Journal of the Korea Institute of Military Science and Technology
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.407-416
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• 2020

Recent complex battle field demands Network Centric Warfare(NCW) ability to control various parts into a cohesive unit. In path planning filed, the NCW ability increases complexity of path planning algorithm, and it has to consider a communication coverage map as well as traditional parameters such as minimum radar exposure and survivability. In this paper, pros and cons of various propagation models are summarized, and we suggest a coverage map generation method using a Longley-Rice propagation model. Previous coverage map based on line of sight has significant discontinuities that limits selection of path planning algorithms such as Dijkstra and fast marching only. If there is method to remove discontinuities in the coverage map, optimization based path planning algorithms such as trajectory optimization and Particle Swarm Optimization(PSO) can also be used. In this paper, the Longley-Rice propagation model is used to calculate continuous RF strengths, and convert the strength data using smoothed leaky BER for the coverage map. In addition, we also suggest other types of rough coverage map generation using a lookup table method with simple inputs such as terrain type and antenna heights only. The implemented communication coverage map can be used various path planning algorithms, especially in the optimization based algorithms.