As part of an Army/CERDEC (Fort Monmouth) Small Business Innovation Research grant, RKF developed an ad hoc network tool. The tool simulated a variety of management and traffic protocols with easily adjustable parameters.  The concept of the tool was to use very fast simulation methods, to automate the process of varying environmental parameters (including other legacy systems), and test a large number of scenarios to optimize selection of ad hoc protocols.

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Finding an optimal allocation for any complex system is extremely difficult. Hundreds of parameters must be simultaneously optimized. Many of these parameters are highly dependent on other parameters (e.g. adjacent coverage areas may cause interference). In addition the system must be sufficiently flexible to be able to accept complex requirements for coverage that cannot be specified by a simple rule.

Traditional approaches have been shown to solve well-defined problems that can be described by a few parameters. However, once the complexity of the design reaches a certain level, classic approaches fall apart. Rule-based approaches can yield some improvements, but are likely to have significant inefficiencies because the rules cannot possibly take into account the complex set of interactions of hundreds of interdependent parameters.