Abstract: In the context of cyber warfare, the structural design and load configuration of military communication networks should prioritize the prevention and management of node or edge damage. The satisfaction degree of communication requirements among network nodes is an appropriate metric for evaluating network performance. Therefore, this paper proposes the concept of surplus degree, which considers setting up alternate paths in advance to cope with the loss of network functionality. The goal of network design is to reduce the number of hop counts in communication paths and to increase and balance their surplus degree. This paper address the complex military network load configuration problem through the use of a minimal hop count path searching model, which plans paths incrementally, along with a relatively straightforward bi-objective programming model. The proposed path and load design algorithm is more in line with the characteristics and requirements of military network design compared to existing research on network load configuration. Through numerical simulations, the algorithm’s universality and superiority in a given network environment were compared and verified. Suggestions are then made to further optimize the current algorithm in order to find the optimal solution and to reduce the computational complexity for complex large-scale networks. 

Key words: network load configuration, military communication network, surplus degree, alternate path, minimal hop count path search, bi-objective programming