Military Embedded Systems

At 40 years old this fall, the VMEbus standard’s longevity can be traced to its inventors, VME product designers, VITA Standards Organization members, military systems users, and also to the creativity and marketing acumen of a rock and roll aficionado named Marty Simon. Marty – founder of The Simon Group, member of the VITA Hall of Fame, early proponent of VME, my friend, and the most positive person I’ve ever come across – passed away in September at the age of 77 from complications from ALS.

Welcome to the SOSA Special Edition, which marks the release of the The Open Group Technical Standard for Sensor Open Systems Architecture (SOSA) Reference Architecture, Edition 1.0. This magazine is the first of what will be an annual issue, highlighting editorial content on SOSA from the pages and website of Military Embedded Systems Magazine, as well as the products aligned and conformant to the technical standard – all put together exclusively by our staff. Learn about it all in the 2021 SOSA Special Edition!

Welcome to our 2021 September Resource Guide, which is 100 pages or more for the ninth straight year. Print lives, my friends, especially in the defense electronics community. Thanks again to all our loyal readers and advertisers for your support. More importantly, thank you for supporting our warfighters who sacrifice for all of us every day, especially the 13 who gave their lives during the evacuation of Afghanistan, which is happening as I write this column. We can’t thank them enough.

Military suppliers, being essential businesses, weathered the pandemic and economic shutdowns admirably thanks to strong defense funding. Yet even this stalwart industry is feeling the ill effects of the global chip shortage and the consequences of its reliance on offshore semiconductor manufacturing. The U.S. government is committed to returning chip production to the States, but whether that move will be enough and in time to save the industry is yet to be determined.

HUNTSVILLE, Alabama. The U.S. Army - FACE and SOSA Technical Interchange Meeting (TIM) is still on for September 14, 2021 at the Von Braun Center in Huntsville, Alabama. This year's event will feature a Keynote Speaker and expert presentations on Future Airborne Capability Environment (FACE) and Sensor Open Systems Architecture (SOSA) related topics by a cross-section of the defense community, industry, and academia.

SCOTTSDALE, Arizona. The VMEbus technical standard has enjoyed a very long life supporting military systems. At almost 40 years old, it’s probably the longest lasting single standard in the history of computing; it has kept up with technology by supporting backwards compatibility while enabling technology upgrades and is still in use across a broad range of applications. This webcast of industry experts will provide a brief history of VMEbus as well as why and how it remains the reliable stalwart of critical systems used across multiple defense platforms. The speakers will discuss how legacy and EOL issues are dealt with, addressing security issues, support for existing and newer operating systems, and how having a healthy ecosystem with wide vendor support has enabled the standard to such enjoy long-lasting technology refreshes and migration. Use case will also be presented along with a sneak-peek at how some platforms are examining next-gen platform migration from VME to OpenVPX and SOSA.

Military-display designers continue to face stringent size, weight, power, and cost (SWaP-C) constraints while integrating commercial innovations like HD – and soon 4K – into systems that must work with legacy sensors and interfaces while also complying with a variety of open architectures and standards. Meanwhile, researchers plan for military augmented reality and immersive display solutions for warfighters.

Nearly three decades ago, then-U.S. Department of Defense Secretary William Perry issued a memo dictating the use of commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) technology wherever and whenever possible. In many ways, the edict revolutionized procurement and helped integrate new commercial technology more affordably into defense systems, but it also created supply-chain pain for suppliers that is still felt today.

This spring Mercury Systems acquired Pentek, a designer of FPGA single-board computers, data-acquisition boards, recording systems, and other products for radar, signals intelligence (SIGINT), and electronic warfare (EW) applications. In this podcast, Neal Austin, Vice President and General Manager of the Mixed Signal Business Unit within Mercury Systems and Rodger Hosking, co-founder and VP of Pentek Systems deep dive into the acquisition, where Pentek will fit within Mercury, and how the acquisition impacts the Mercury efforts within the Sensor Open Systems Architecture (SOSA) Consortium. They also cover design trends in the radar and electronic warfare markets,  commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) procurement, the impact AI and 5G will have on military electronics, and tackle the engineering recruitment challenges defense companies face.

VANCOUVER, Washington. CRU Data Security Group (CDSG) released the DIGISTOR Citadel family of secure self-encrypting SSDs aimed at military and government applications requiring NSA Data at Rest security protection up to the U.S. government’s secret classification level.

DULLES, Virginia. Modular Open Systems Approach (MOSA) expertise is a key characteristic of the team Raytheon Technologies is putting together to support development of the U.S. Army’s Tactical Intelligence Targeting Access Node (TITAN) program. TITAN is a tactical ground station that finds and tracks threats to support long-range precision targeting.

ANNAPOLIS, Maryland. Annapolis Micro Systems released a 100Gb Ethernet RFSoC board that is alignd to the Sensor Open Systems Architecture Technical Standard. It combines analog and digital capability in a single 3U OpenVPX slot, operations that previously needed two or more boards for the same functions.

Satellites, spacecraft, and communications systems are leveraging the performance benefits of gallium nitride (GaN) RF components as demonstrated by the successful landing of the Mars Perseverance Rover. GaN also fuels innovation in military electronic warfare and radar systems. Dean White, senior director of Defense and Aerospace for Qorvo, discussed these trends with me in the following Q&A. We also covered the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on the U.S. semiconductor industry, military funding, and the engineering recruitment in the defense industry. Edited excerpts follow.

Radiation-hardened microelectronics are in demand, from commercial small sats to NASA manned space missions to military satellite missions in contested space. Designing components for these various applications is a matter of balancing reliability and cost as demand for more commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) components increases.

Supply cycles these days are slow whether you are buying lawn furniture, lumber, raw materials, or mission-critical microelectronics. Reasons range from the pandemic and the resulting economic slowdown to the Suez Canal blockage to tariffs. You name it, you order it, you likely have to wait months to get it.

ANDOVER, Mass.  Mercury Systems, Inc., continuing its run of acquisitions, purchased Pentek Technologies, LLC and Pentek Systems, Inc. (collectively, “Pentek”) in Upper Saddle River, N.J., for an all-cash purchase price of $65 million. Pentek, a competitor to Mercury's embedded signal-processing business, designs software-defined radio (SDR) solutions, FPGA single-board computers, data-acqusition boards, recording systems, and other products for radar, signals intelligence (SIGINT), electronic warfare (EW), and other high-performance defense applications.

It’s unmanned systems issue time again: That means it’s time for the annual xPonential event, which is being held virtually May 4 -6 this year due to the ongoing pandemic. This issue will appear virtually there as well; AUVSI has also announced that the event will be held in person in Atlanta August 16-19. That’s good news. Even more positive news: The continued growth of the unmanned systems market plus renewed commitment from U.S military leadership to leverage autonomous systems.

The ARINC 818 digital video interface and protocol standard is used throughout commercial and military cockpits for avionics display applications. As military video systems continue to increase in complexity in and out of the cockpit, for example in intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) sensor systems, the demand for ARINC 818 solutions is growing. In this podcast, Tim Keller, Chief Operations Officer at Great River Technology discusses defines what ARINC 818 is, discusses common misconceptions about the standard, and describes its growing use in sensor applications and in training and simulation applications. Keller also details new ARINC 818 training for engineers and explores how the standard could potentially work within the Sensor Open Systems Architecture Technical Standard.

SCOTTSDALE, Arizona. One of the keys to the success of the Sensor Open Systems Architecture (SOSA) is that it was developed by aligning with current open standards and open systems architectures, including FACE, HOST, REDHAWK, OpenVPX, and similar specifications. The SOSA Consortium also works closely with such standards organizations as VITA, FACE, PICMG, IEEE, SAE International, Wireless Innovation Forum, and others. This webcast, titled "How SOSA Aligns with Current Open Standards," held Tuesday, May 11, covers how the SOSA Technical Standard has adapted to and aligned with open architecture standards and how it has impacted the design of SOSA-conformant hardware and software.

Reduced size, weight, and power (SWaP) requirements are pervasive throughout defense electronics platforms. Electronic footprints continue to shrink so much that traditional small form factors like 3U VPX or 3U CompactPCI are considered too big. So, it's not surprising that the VITA Standards Organization (VSO) is looking at new form factors, such as Short VPX. In this podcast, Jay Grandin, Vice President of Product Development at Annapolis Micro Systems discusses demand for small form factors, how Short VPX can meet that demand and how it fits into the Open VPX ecosystem. Grandin also explores what military applications would be best suited for the new standard and how it could potentially work within the Sensor Open Systems Architecture (SOSA) Technical Standard, of which version 1.0 is expected to be completed this year.