Performance Comparison between WiMAX and WLAN and Construction of Tactical/Strategic Communication Network Using OPNET

As part of overseas defense program of the US's Trump administration, the military allies were asked to cover partial operation costs for the weaponry deployed at the US bases in their countries. This raised the Korean government's, as well as defense industry's interest in constructing a tactical/strategic communication network and investments are being made actively. Thus, in this study, the performances of WiMAX and WLAN have been compared and a tactical/strategic communication network has been constructed for simulation by using OPNET. As a result, the simulation for the network using combat tanks was successful. An average communication distance that can be achieved by WLAN in open terrain is about 200m as it has been designed on the premise of short-range wireless communications. When the distance was increased to 1km, the tanks could not receive data. By contrast, it was able to confirm that the WiMAX-based network has allowed smooth communications at the same distance. Based on this result, it can be concluded that using WiMAX for tactical operations will have much more merit than adopting WLAN as far as the distance is concerned.