Military Embedded Systems

FREMONT, California. Elma Electronic has added six more high-speed backplanes that align with The Open Group Sensor Open Systems Architecture (SOSA) Technical Standard 1.0 which will enable complex, high-speed signal processing, the company said in a statement.

Today, multiple agencies are involved in open architecture standards to ensure that weapons and defense system features match up with their perception of future systems specified and beginning to be used by the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD). Examples of key attributes provided by these standards relevant to electronic warfare (EW) are the VPX backplane profiles and MORA/V49.2 protocols. The DoD has had a hand in developing both of these in order to specify and develop reference architectures to verify performance.  

Do you miss the U.S. defense budgets of yore, where costs for programs skyrocketed into the billions and overall defense spending reached into the trillions? Where cost was not a concern, only a capability? If you’re pining for those days, then you probably don’t want to read our Nov/Dec issue. 

ANNAPOLIS, Md.  Modular Open Systems Approach (MOSA) equipment supplier Annapolis Micro Systems announced the addition of new 3U VPX ATR [air transport rack] and 19-inch rackmount chassis to its WILD100 family of chassis, backplanes, and chassis managers.  

Emerging cognitive-based capabilities offer tremendous promise for dealing with the increasingly challenging battlespace.

Experts from the Navy Air Combat Electronics program office (PMA-209) recently participated in the Future Airborne Capability Environment (FACE) and Sensor Open Systems Architecture (SOSA) Consortia exposition in Dayton, Ohio. At the event the Avionics Architecture Team (AAT) for PMA-209 demonstrated several of its open architecture (OA) projects that are reducing software integration time and maintenance costs for the U.S. Navy. 

The U.S. Army’s Mounted Assured PNT System (MAPS) program was initiated to replace existing GPS receivers and antennas in most of the Army’s ground vehicle variants, eliminating redundancy. The program is overseen by PM-PNT at the Army’s Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland, where mounted and dismounted position, navigation, and timing (PNT) technologies for the Army are developed and managed.

The U.S. and its military allies rely on GPS for navigation of high-value assets, but the technology is quite vulnerable to jamming and other interference. Teams in the military-communications industry are looking at solutions including machine learning (ML) and alternative navigation systems that are less susceptible to disruption.

Power is a key consideration for modern open architecture initiatives such as the Sensor Open Systems Architecture (SOSA) Technical Standard, says John Sturm, Vice President of Business Development for the Aerospace & Defense business unit of Vicor, when I interviewed him just before Thanksgiving. We also discussed where custom power supplies fit into the defense world and talked about how commercial AI and big data applications are driving innovation and cost reductions in defense power component manufacturing, recruiting engineering talent into the defense market, and what will be a disruptor in military power supplies in the future. Edited excerpts follow.

Pixus Technologies, a provider of embedded computing and enclosure solutions, has developed a high performance backplane with signals above 28Gbaud across the backplane slots. The design leverages the 6U OpenVPX form factor and VITA 66/67 RF and optical interfaces, but utilizes a special high-speed connector for the fastest data rates.