Military Embedded Systems

Shrink it down but bolster the processing power. Engineer it so it’s light enough to fly on an airborne platform but never overheats. These are the contradicting design challenges manufacturers still face when building power supplies for military applications. Innovations in the field are ongoing, and both standardization consortia and the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) are starting to phase out antiquated power supplies.

Chatsworth, Calif. October 2020 – Aitech Systems, a leading provider of rugged boards and system level solutions for military, aerospace and space applications, now offers the U-C8770, a single board computer (SBC) that couples the Modular Open Systems Approach (MOSA) outlined by the US Department of Defense (DoD) with flagship performance and proprietary, hardware-based cybersecurity features.

Pixus Technologies, a provider of embedded computing and enclosure solutions, has announced new OpenVPX backplanes designed for horizontal-mount enclosures.

Chatsworth, Calif. October 2020 – Aitech Systems, a leading provider of rugged boards and system level solutions for military, aerospace and space applications, now offers the U-C8770, a single board computer (SBC) that couples the Modular Open Systems Approach (MOSA) outlined by the US Department of Defense (DoD) with flagship performance and proprietary, hardware-based cybersecurity features. 

HUNTSVILLE, Ala., Oct. 20, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Abaco Systems announces the VP431, the next generation of our industry-leading VP430 3U VPX commercial off-the-shelf direct RF processing system, now featuring the all-new 3rd-generation Xilinx Radio Frequency System-on-Chip (RFSoC) Technology.  The VP431 maximizes I/O channel density, reduces the radio frequency signal chain complexity, and was developed in alignment with the Sensor Open Systems Architecture™ (SOSA) technical standard to help reduce development and integration time and reduce acquisition and lifetime costs.

Counter-Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) systems are pivotal players on the electromagnetic spectrum. In this podcast, Emma Helfrich, guest host and associate editor with Military Embedded Systems, talks with Ryan Hurt, vice president of business development at Liteye Systems, to discuss the C-UAV systems that equip the U.S. Army. Helfrich and Hurt cover the Electronic Warfare (EW) capabilities, like radar and sensors, that power C-UAV systems and further the idea that innovation is dependent on data processing and intelligent algorithms to reduce the sensor-to-shooter timeline and protect the Army from aerial threats.

Electronic warfare (EW) not only plays a dominant role in worldwide defense capabilities, but it also must evolve rapidly to counter new threats and take advantage of new technology. Each advance must take into account the ever-changing system design landscape.

Modern battlefields present many complex challenges for Army soldiers, one of which is how to operate in GPS-denied environment. In this podcast, George Hsu, CTO, founder, and board member of PNI Sensor Corp., discusses the challenges in designing sensor solutions for warfighters in these environments like sensor stabilization for moving soldiers and power efficiencies as wel as how PNI leverages artificial intelligence (AI) for their sensor designs. He also describes the perfect magnetic sensor — that will provide longitude and latitude in any environment.  

AUSA NOW Virtual Conference 2020. Curtiss-Wright’s Defense Solutions division announced at the AUSA NOW virtual conference its comprehensive strategy for system solutions designed in compliance with the U.S. Army CCDC C5ISR Center’s C4ISR/EW Modular Open Suite of Standards (CMOSS) and aligned with standards currently being defined by The Open Group Sensor Open Systems Architecture (SOSA) Consortium. 

By Richard Jaenicke and Steve Edwards

Security-critical applications, such as cross-domain solutions (CDS), require a secure, trusted platform on which to execute, spanning software, firmware, and hardware. The lowest layer that the application interacts with directly is a trusted operating system (OS). Trust in the OS is dependent on two factors: its robustness from a security perspective, and assurance that the OS was both loaded and configured correctly and never tampered with. OS trust also depends partly on trusted pre-OS functionality, such as secure boot firmware that executes before the OS.