Military Embedded Systems April/May 2020

@military_cots

John McHale

8

Defense industry adapts to pandemic

University Update

10

Autonomous vehicles get smarter

MilTech Trends

Optimizing SWaP for infrared in UASs

Industry Spotlight

Ruggedizing interconnect for unmanned MIL-EMBEDDED.COM

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April/May 2020 | Volume 16 | Number 3

P 24

COUNTER-UAS TECHNOLOGY ADVANCES P 18

UNMANNED SYSTEMS ISSUE

P 32 The need for interoperability standards in SATCOM for unmanned systems

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TABLE OF CONTENTS 24

April/May 2020 Volume 16 | Number 3

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COLUMNS Editor’s Perspective 8 Defense industry adapts to pandemic

By John McHale

University Update 10 Autonomous vehicles and robots are about to get even smarter

By Sally Cole

Technology Update 12 Is photonics the disruptive answer to turbocharging digital speed and efficiency?

By Lisa Daigle

Mil Tech Insider 13 Multivendor interoperability is real: The TSOA Interoperability Demo

By Mark Grovak

FEATURES SPECIAL REPORT: Counter-UAS technology 18 C-UAS philosophy and needs dictate system advancements

By Emma Helfrich, Associate Editor MIL TECH TRENDS: Reducing SWaP in unmanned sensor payloads 24 Sensor payloads for military unmanned systems get smarter

By Sally Cole, Senior Editor 28 Enabling infrared systems in UASs through SWaP optimization

By Ross Bannatyne, Senseeker Engineering 32 The need for interoperability standards in SATCOM for unmanned systems

By Rick Lober, Hughes Network Systems

THE LATEST

INDUSTRY SPOTLIGHT: Interconnect technologies for unmanned systems

Defense Tech Wire 14 By Emma Helfrich

36 Full-motion video distribution for defense using open-source Secure

Editor’s Choice Products 44 By Mil-Embedded Staff Connecting with Mil Embedded 46 By Mil-Embedded Staff

Reliable Transport

By Jack Welsh, Haivision 40 Ruggedizing interconnects for military and commercial UAVs

By Michael Walmsley and William Newton, TE Connectivity 40

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ON THE COVER: The Military Embedded Systems April/May 2020 Unmanned Systems issue features articles on counter-UAS technology, overcoming the challenges of unmanned payloads, and interconnect for unmanned systems. The cover image shows the autonomous MQ-9 Reaper from General Atomics Aeronatuical Systems (GA-ASI), which is capable of carrying an electronic warfare payload. Photo courtesy GA-ASI.

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GROUP EDITORIAL DIRECTOR John McHale john.mchale@opensysmedia.com ASSISTANT MANAGING EDITOR Lisa Daigle lisa.daigle@opensysmedia.com SENIOR EDITOR Sally Cole sally.cole@opensysmedia.com ASSOCIATE EDITOR Emma Helfrich emma.helfrich@opensysmedia.com DIRECTOR OF E-CAST LEAD GENERATION AND AUDIENCE ENGAGEMENT Joy Gilmore joy.gilmore@opensysmedia.com CREATIVE DIRECTOR Stephanie Sweet stephanie.sweet@opensysmedia.com SENIOR WEB DEVELOPER Aaron Ganschow aaron.ganschow@opensysmedia.com WEB DEVELOPER Paul Nelson paul.nelson@opensysmedia.com CONTRIBUTING DESIGNER Joann Toth joann.toth@opensysmedia.com EMAIL MARKETING SPECIALIST Drew Kaufman drew.kaufman@opensysmedia.com VITA EDITORIAL DIRECTOR Jerry Gipper jerry.gipper@opensysmedia.com

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EDITOR’S PERSPECTIVE

Defense industry adapts to pandemic John.McHale@opensysmedia.com

By John McHale, Editorial Director

As I write this, we’re finishing up our April/May issue of Military Embedded Systems, our annual Unmanned Systems issue. Its publication annually coincides with the AUVSI XPONENTIAL trade show, which was to be held this year in Boston during the first full week of May. Due to the global COVID-19 pandemic, it’s been tentatively postponed until August 8-10, still in Boston. Will that date hold? Or will XPONENTIAL follow other aerospace and defense shows that were to be held this spring but were canceled, including AUSA Global Force, Quad A, Aerospace Tech Week, Sea Air Space, SOFIC, and Eurosatory?

We still don’t know. Some states are keeping their shelter-in-place orders in effect until June, while others are pushing to lift them in May. Despite the uncertainty, the defense industry must carry on and is in fact doing so: Defense electronics companies – prime contractors, system integrators, and commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) suppliers – remain essential businesses as defined by the government and can thus remain open during shelter-in-place orders.

Some companies – such as primes – are better suited to survive this uncertain period than others; some smaller COTS suppliers who play in markets other than defense, such as commercial aerospace, might see more bumps ahead.

The pandemic has significantly affected the commercial aviation business as airlines across the globe ground their fleets, Mark Aslett, CEO of Mercury Systems in Andover, Massachusetts, told me recently in my McHale Report podcast. (Listen to the podcast here: http://mil-embedded.com/12378-defense-industry-response-to-covid-19pandemic/.) There has been a wave of furloughs and layoffs throughout the aerospace industry, “but it has not impacted us, as most of we do is defense-related and defined as essential,” he added.

The effects on the U.S. defense business were seen early on, Aslett said; depending on where defense firms were located, they had to close down until the government eventually declared those supporting the defense industry “essential businesses,” he noted.

While the top of the supply chain is steady, not every company in the defense supply chain is deemed essential in the eyes of the government. Many have also had to shut a facility due to illness. Pockets of uncertainty remain.

“We’ve seen progress around major primes supporting small businesses inside of industry,” Aslett said. “For many small businesses it comes down to cash flow. With the DoD improving the cash-flow performance, payments have filtered down into the small suppliers.”

He told me this was a lesson learned from the days of sequestration when that process did not happen and many small businesses took the hit.

Speed of acquisition is also a concern today and a topic I often talk about in this space.

Along those lines, I asked Aslett if he’d heard any reports of funding getting to companies more quickly during the pandemic as a way to get cash to these businesses.

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MILITARY EMBEDDED SYSTEMS

“We are and we aren’t,” he answered.

Generally, the Defense Department is doing things such as adopting more use of OTAs [Other Transaction Authorities] to speed up the contracting process. Even before the pandemic, he said, there was “desire and work being done to speed up the flow.” However, he observed, some government entities have “stopped awarding new contracts at this time. It’s not as consistent as should be.”

Whether it’s the DoD speaking to primes and suppliers or company management helping their engineers, the key right now is communication: “There hasn’t been a time in my career that I’ve communicated as much as I’m doing right now. We’ve been very engaged with our customers, communicating with them and with industry associations as well as shareholders.”

The most important communication for any company is with employees – ensuring that they can work safely.

“Internally I chair the COVID response team,” Aslett said. “We meet daily on that and have been doing that for weeks now.” It’s about communicating at the speed of relevance so as to make decisions in real time – to protect the employees’ health and safety as well as livelihood, he added.

Aslett told me Mercury also initiated a $1 million emergency relief fund to help its hourly employees purchase supplies, food, medication, and the like.

Mercury is not the only company doing what it can to help employees and their communities. If you have a story to share about how your defense electronics company is responding in a positive way during the pandemic, please share it with me or our associate editor Emma Helfrich at emma.helfrich@opensysmedia.com.

We will gather and share them with our audience. We look forward to hearing from you. www.mil-embedded.com

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UNIVERSITY UPDATE

Autonomous vehicles and robots are about to get even smarter

By Sally Cole, Senior Editor Ultrafast image sensors with built-in neural networks that can sense and process optical images without latency – an application that will no doubt be useful in unmanned systems, drones, and robots in the military arena.

the neural network in the chip is configured – making some connections in the network stronger and others weaker.”

(Figure 1.)

A group of researchers at Vienna University of Technology (TU Wien, Vienna, Austria) report that they have created neural hardware capable of image recognition within nanoseconds – and it can be trained to recognize certain objects.

Automatic image recognition is already widely used today: You may have heard about computer programs reliably diagnosing skin cancer, navigating self-driving cars, or controlling robots. Until now, these capabilities have been based on the evaluation of image data as delivered by normal cameras, which is time-consuming. When the number of images recorded per second is high, the large volume of data generated is difficult to handle.

But the TU Wien researchers opted for a different approach: By using a special twodimensional material, they built an image sensor that can be trained to recognize certain objects. A chip represents an artificial neural network capable of learning.

Because the chip itself provides ultrafast information about what it is currently seeing – within nanoseconds – data doesn’t have to be read out and processed by a computer.

Neural networks are artificial systems that operate in a similar manner to our brains.

Nerve cells are connected to many other nerve cells; when one cell is active it can influence the activity of neighboring nerve cells. Artificial learning on computers works according to the same principle: A network of neurons is simulated digitally, and the strength with which one node of this network influences the other is changed until the network shows the desired behavior.

“Typically, the image data is first read out pixel by pixel and then processed on the computer,” says Thomas Mueller, a TU Wien associate professor with a research group that specializes in nanoscale optoelectronics, leading this work. “We, on the other hand, integrate the neural network with its artificial intelligence directly into the hardware of the image sensor. This makes object recognition many orders of magnitude faster.”

The researchers developed and manufactured the chip right at TU Wien. It’s based on photodetectors made of tungsten diselenide – an ultrathin material that consists of only three atomic layers. Individual photodetectors, the “pixels” of the camera system, are connected to a small number of output elements that provide the result of object recognition.

One of the chip’s features is learning through variable sensitivity. “In our chip, we can specifically adjust the sensitivity of each individual detector element. In other words, we can control the way a signal picked up by a particular detector affects the output signal,” says Lukas Mennel, who works in Mueller’s research group. “We simply adjust a local electric field directly at the photodetector. This adaptation is done externally, with the help of a computer program. You can, for example, use the sensor to record different letters and change the sensitivities of the individual pixels step by step until a certain letter always leads exactly to a corresponding signal. This is how

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MILITARY EMBEDDED SYSTEMS

Figure 1 | A picture is analyzed by the neural network chip, which then provides the appropriate output signal. Photo: Joanna Symonowicz, TU Wien.

Once this learning process is complete, the computer is no longer needed. The neural network can work alone now; if a certain letter is presented to the sensor, it generates the trained output signal within 50 nanoseconds.

The group’s goal: Fast object detection: “Our chip test is still small at the moment, but you can easily scale up the technology depending on the tasks you want to solve,” says Mueller. “In principle, the chip could also be trained to distinguish apples from bananas, but we see its use more in scientific experiments or other specialized applications.”

The technology can be usefully applied whenever extremely high speed is required. “From fracture mechanics to particle detection, in many research areas, short events are investigated,” Mueller adds. “Often it’s not necessary to keep all of the data about this event, but rather to answer a very specific question: Does a crack propagate from left to right? Which of several possible particles has just passed by? This is exactly what our technology is good for.” www.mil-embedded.com

TECHNOLOGY UPDATE

Is photonics the disruptive answer to turbocharging digital speed and efficiency?

By Lisa Daigle As chip technology and compute capacity continue to advance – laid over the trajectory of Moore’s Law – digital interconnect speed and utility need to progress along with them. Continuing improvements in signals efficiency, bandwidth density, and integration are needed to accommodate future demands for connectivity.

To address this challenge, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) developed the Photonics in the Package for Extreme Scalability (PIPES) program, which intends to expand the use of optical signaling for data transfer. It also aims to insert high-bandwidth photonics inside the packaging of application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) and field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). PIPES is part of the second phase of DARPA’s Electronics Resurgence Initiative (ERI) – a five-year, $1.5 billion-plus investment in the future of U.S. government and defense electronics systems. ERI Phase II is focusing on developing new types of manufacturing capabilities and crafting a road map for supplying high-performance electronics for the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) and its commercial partners.

Bottlenecks and limited performance occur when data moves between optical transceivers and advanced ICs in the electrical domain. Integrating photonic solutions into the microelectronics package, DARPA researchers posited, would remove this limitation and enable new levels of parallel computing.

DARPA selected teams to take on three research areas under the PIPES program: Development and integration of optical signaling technology for next-generation digital microelectronics, with a particular focus on defense applications, creation of technologies and concepts that will lead to even better technical performance, and the exploration of new approaches to signaling that system architects can put into practice.

The PIPES project’s first research area – focused on developing high-performance optical input/output (I/O) technologies packaged with advanced ICs like FPGAs and ASICs – is being spearheaded by teams led by industry bigwigs Xilinx and Intel. The new technologies that come out of this piece will enable ICs with unprecedented bandwidth density, energy efficiency, and reach. The agency also says that researchers from Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, and BAE Systems will be looped into the development of these optical I/O technologies to ensure that the results address the requirements of current and future defense needs. The researchers will also investigate which defense applications could benefit most from this technology.

“The benefits of optical signaling in digital systems have been recognized for a long time,” states PIPES program manager Dr. Gordon Keeler. “The integration of photonics within the package will have enormous benefits for commercial and defense applications, but it comes with considerable challenges. PIPES researchers are working to solve practical technical problems to meet the ambitious goals of the program, which include enabling I/O data rates as fast as 100 terabits/sec at signaling energies below one picojoule per bit [one trillionth of a joule]. At the same time, the teams are studying how to tailor their technologies to address national security applications where operating conditions may be very demanding.”

The second PIPES research area aims to push the optical I/O technologies an order of magnitude beyond even what Xilinx Corporation and Intel seek to accomplish, Keeler says:

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MILITARY EMBEDDED SYSTEMS

“To help establish appropriate benchmarks for this research area, we first projected how much data will need to be transported from leading-edge ICs in the 2028 timeframe. Compared to the data capacity of a modern chip today, we may need up to 100 times more off-chip I/O. That’s a petabit [1,000 terabits] per second – roughly the equivalent of the entire world’s internet traffic today – but from a single chip. This is an aggressive benchmark, and we expect the technologies developed in this research area will be less mature at the program’s conclusion, but, if successful, we’ll position photonics to enable disruptive change in future microelectronic systems.”

The research teams selected to explore component technologies and facilitate on-package optical I/O include groups from Sandia National Laboratories, UCSD, UCSB, Columbia University, and University of Pennsylvania.

The final research area of the program wants to ask and answer the question of how system architects can both solve the problems and seize the opportunities created by high-performance optical I/O technologies. Researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, are handling this portion.

“If we can seamlessly integrate optical I/O with advanced ICs – and reduce the energy and latency of data movement enough – we eliminate the need to keep data local. It is a major paradigm shift, an opportunity to employ completely different system architectures,” Keeler asserts. “Take optical switching, for example. As data increasingly moves on optical fibers and can be routed long distances, how should we use distributed, disaggregated, and flexible system concepts? This research area will focus on creating novel optical packaging approaches and optical switching technologies to support potential opportunities that emerge through PIPES.” www.mil-embedded.com

MIL TECH INSIDER

Multivendor interoperability is real: The TSOA Interoperability Demo

By Mark Grovak An industry perspective from Curtiss-Wright Defense Solutions On January 29, 2020, the first Tri-Service Open Architecture Interoperability Demonstration (TSOA-ID) was held in Atlanta, Georgia, hosted by Georgia Research Tech Institute at its Conference Center. The event was attended by nearly 300 representatives of government, industry, and academia, and was supported by the U.S. Army, Navy, and Air Force. The sponsors of the event were Naval Air Systems Command, Program Executive Office Aviation, COEVCOM C5ISR Center, and Air Force LCMC. The importance of the TSOA-ID was reflected in the presentations by the distinguished keynote speakers: Randall G. Walden, Member of the Senior Executive Service, Director and Program Executive Officer for the Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office; and Col. Nickolas Kioutas, Project Manager for Positioning, Navigation and Timing (PM PNT) at PEO IEW&S. Walden spoke on “Rapid Acquisition Perspectives,” providing an overview of how open system architectures can be leveraged to speed the delivery of new capabilities to the warfighter. Col. Kioutas spoke on “Standards as a Strategic Capability” and discussed his vision for how CMOSS (C4ISR/EW Modular Open Suite of Standards) – which is being included in and managed under the Sensor Open Systems Architecture (SOSA) initiative with Army, Air Force, and Navy participation – can reduce integration costs and risks, mitigate obsolescence facilitate interoperability and reuse, and accelerate the fielding and delivery of Assured PNT solutions to the warfighter.

The event included Open Systems Realization demonstrations by three leading COTS [commercial off-the-shelf] solutions vendors: Elma Electronic, Curtiss-Wright, and Leonardo DRS. These demos highlighted the greater maturity and wider acceptance of open architectures, such as FACE [Future Airborne Capability Environment], HOST [Hardware Open Systems Technologies], SOSA, and CMOSS and how the use of these standards has improved interoperability, significantly reducing the time needed to integrate hardware and software applications from different vendors.

One of the demos featured an artificial intelligence (AI)-based solution for ISR/EW situational awareness and high-speed Type 1 certification-ready top-secret data encryption. This demonstration strongly underlined the benefits resulting from the open systems architecture (OSA) approach by rapidly and easily integrating hardware and applications from four individual companies. The demo, which featured AI-based COTS solutions for signal intelligence (SIGINT) and EW situational awareness applications, showed a deployable solution for RF spectrum situational awareness that automatically classifies signals through the use of machine learning.

The system also demonstrated certification-ready NSA Type 1 data encryption of ISR data at a read/write throughput of 10/17 Gbps (nominal/maximum) per data channel, providing system designers with an unprecedented combination of high-speed data recording and secure encryption.

OSA COTS hardware used in the demonstration included Curtiss-Wright’s 3U OpenVPX CHAMP-XD1 digital signal processing (DSP) module, VPX3-1260 Intel Xeon Coffee Lake single-board computer (SBC), VPX3-673 Assured PNT module, and VPX3-687 10GbE network switch module. Variants of the DSP and SBC modules featured in the demonstration are being developed in alignment with the SOSA Technical Standard. The demo also included the 3U OpenVPX Leonardo DRS SI-9172 Vesper Tuner/Exciter; www.mil-embedded.com

L3Harris-Camden DataCrypt XMC mezzanine module PCIe encryptor and 3U OpenVPX NVMe secure storage module; and General Dynamics Mission Systems SignalEye artificial intelligence-based SIGINT automation threat detection.

The TSOA-ID event achieved its aim of showing how open system initiatives developed by industry have matured to the point that more powerful systems can be integrated more quickly and easily. The growing OSA ecosystem achievement breaks decades-long barriers created by tightly integrated systems, enabling new capabilities to be transitioned orders of magnitude faster than the past. For example, the demo described above required only a couple of days to integrate, an effort that would have required weeks to accomplish without today’s open standards. Industry has shown that interoperability is real.

Emerging requirements will benefit from the modularity and ease of integration delivered by OSA. Multivendor interoperability standards like CMOSS enable system designers to support the constant churn of solutions needed to meet evolving threats, with greater control, ease and lowered risk.

Industry now looks to government for new programs of record that mandate and leverage the use of these standards.

Industry has made the investment and proven the viability and advantages of OSA, which means getting new capabilities to the warfighter faster. The challenge is no longer pulling the hardware and software together: It’s time for the acquisition process to begin and real programs to emerge. Industry is ready.

Mark Grovak is Director, Avionics Business Development, at Curtiss-Wright Defense Solutions.

Curtiss-Wright Defense Solutions www.curtisswrightds.com

MILITARY EMBEDDED SYSTEMS

April/May 2020 13

DEFENSE TECH WIRE NEWS | TRENDS | DOD SPENDS | CONTRACTS | TECHNOLOGY UPDATES

By Emma Helfrich, Associate Editor

Artificial intelligence to equip M88 fleet at tactical edge Raytheon and Uptake, an industrial-use artificial intelligence (AI) software company, have teamed to bring predictive maintenance capabilities to deployed U.S. Marine Corps teams using M88 armored recovery vehicles. With this partnership, Raytheon will aim to bring the technical ability for onboard recording, processing, and transfer of large quantities of sensitive data over secure Wi-Fi. For its part, Uptake intends to bring a suite of advanced artificial intelligence (AI) software that offers actionable insights at the component level.

Figure 1 | The M88A2 Hercules is a full-tracked, armored vehicle that uses the existing M88A1 chassis but significantly improves towing, winching, lifting, and braking characteristics. U.S. Army photo.

While current maintenance and logistics decisions are event-based or timeline-driven, militaries are increasingly using advanced data analytics and condition-based monitoring to identify problems and provide alerts before they happen. For Marines using the M88, use of AI ensures predictive-maintenance strategies are in place to improve long-term vehicle health and maximize availability.

NEMESIS program to provide actionable intelligence HRL Laboratories has completed live demonstrations of its Neumorphic Eye In the Sky (NEMESIS) program, a drone-based system designed to analyze situational awareness and provide actionable intelligence in real time. NEMESIS is a bioinspired videoprocessing system intended to emulate the human vision system from multimodal sensor data, providing tactical decisions and actionable intelligence to warfighters on the ground immediately.

For the field demonstrations, two primary tests were conducted, with the first one activity recognition: This test included real-time object detection, classification, and tracking of people, vehicles, or packages. NEMESIS also indicated single or group human behaviors. The second test involved recognizing mission phases such as unit position, building entry, and regrouping phases.

HRL officials report that NEMESIS detected mission anomalies such as incorrect individual positions, incorrect unit positions, and incomplete regroupings and explained these anomalies via human-understandable text.

Coyote Block 2 C-UAS systems cleared for sale The U.S. government has cleared Raytheon to sell the Coyote Block 2 counter-unmanned aerial system (C-UAS) weapon to approved allied nations as part of the Howler counte-drone system. In 2019, the U.S. Army deployed Howler, a combination of the Ku-band Radio Frequency System (KuRFS) and Coyote Block 1, into the battlefield.

The high-speed, maneuverable Block 2 is designed to use Raytheon’s KuRFS multi-mission radar as its fire control source.

Raytheon recently completed developmental, operational, and customer acceptance testing on the Coyote Block 2 variant. Powered by a jet engine, the new weapon can be launched from the ground to destroy UASs and other aerial threats. According to the company, Raytheon expects to achieve full-rate production of Coyote Block 2 in 2020.

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Figure 2 | The Coyote Block 2 counterdrone weapon and KuRFS radar worked together to detect and engage a target in a recent test over the U.S. Army Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona. Raytheon photo.

www.mil-embedded.com

Lower Tier Air & Missile Defense radar completes testing Raytheon completed the first round of testing of the first partially populated radar antenna array for the U.S. Army’s Lower Tier Air and Missile Defense Sensor (LTAMDS), just five months after the Army chose Raytheon to build the next-generation radar system. LTAMDS consists of a primary antenna array on the front of the radar, and two secondary arrays on the rear. The radar antennas work together to enable operators to both detect and engage threats from various directions.

Figure 3 | A full-scale mockup of the Lower Tier Air and Missile Defense Sensor, designed to defeat advanced threats including hypersonic weapons. Raytheon photo.

According to the company, the testing consisted of calibrating LTAMDS primary antenna array in an indoor, climate-controlled test range, and evaluating its performance against simulated targets. With testing complete, the array is being mounted on a precision-machined enclosure for integration and further evaluation. It will then commence testing at an outdoor range against real-world targets.

Nanotech solutions for cyberattacks goal of AFRL, NAU partnership

U.S. Army’s MQ-1C UAS to get advanced satcom connections

Personnel from the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) recently joined industry and military partners at Northern Arizona University (NAU) to discuss a multimillion-dollar cybersecurity project headed by Professor Bertrand Cambou. Cambou, a professor of nanotechnology and cybersecurity in the School of Informatics, Computing, and Cyber Systems (SICCS), is the principal investigator (PI) on a grant from the U.S. Air Force to develop nanotechnology solutions for cyberattacks and cyberwarfare.

SICCS professor Paul Flikkema is the PI on a grant aimed at developing hardware for computer diversity. Together, the grants total $6.3 million and include a dozen researchers and students at NAU.

Hughes Network Systems has won a data link modernization contract from General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc. (GA-ASI) to supply new advanced satellite communications (satcom) systems for the U.S. Army’s MQ-1C Gray Eagle unmanned aircraft system (UAS).

The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) brought in additional partners to aid in the transfer of technologies. The project has two major goals: to develop key technology modules to enable new forms of protection across the landscape of cybersecurity needs, and to develop and combine several new technologies, including innovations in microelectronics and the design of computer hardware.

Under the terms of the contract, Hughes will integrate its ruggedized HM400 modems – compatible with the DoD’s waveform technology – in both air and ground platforms for the U.S. Army Gray Eagle UAS and will supply ongoing software upgrades to maintain continuous operational resiliency. Additionally, Hughes will work with Comtech Telecommunications to produce ground equipment and waveform technology in support of the program.

HELIOS laser weapon system nears ship integration Lockheed Martin and the U.S. Navy moved one step closer to integrating a laser weapon system onto an Arleigh Burke destroyer after conducting a Critical Design Review (CDR) for the High-Energy Laser with Integrated Opticaldazzler and Surveillance (HELIOS) system. This year, HELIOS will undergo system integration in Moorestown, N.J., which has been the home of Aegis Combat System development for 50 years.

The HELIOS system will then be tested at the Wallops Island (Virginia) Navy land-based test site. This initial test will reduce program risk before being delivered to a shipyard for integration into an Arleigh Burke destroyer next year. In addition to being built into the ship’s structure, HELIOS will become an integrated component of the ship’s Aegis combat system. www.mil-embedded.com

Figure 4 | Lockheed Martin’s fiber lasers operate with an efficiency that generates less heat and exists in a smaller package, allowing easier incorporation into various defense platforms. Lockheed Martin photo.

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DEFENSE TECH WIRE NEWS | TRENDS | DOD SPENDS | CONTRACTS | TECHNOLOGY UPDATES

FLIR sensors to equip U.S. Army vehicles Raytheon has developed, manufactured, and delivered the third-generation Forward-Looking Infrared (FLIR) sensor system, secured under a U.S. Army contract awarded in 2016. The FLIR system is designed to give soldiers four fields of view and the ability to see across long- and midwave IR bands simultaneously with a stabilized line of sight. The Raytheon system is an advanced targeting application that uses heat instead of light to see through contested environments to perform targeting, reconnaissance, and fire support.

Figure 5 | A U.S. Army soldier watches over tanks in his unit with a 3rd-gen FLIR-equipped Long Range Advanced Scout Surveillance System during a training session. U.S. Army photo.

Second-generation systems enable soldiers to see the battlefield with just two fields of view and far less clarity. Existing Army platforms have second-generation sighting systems designed for each vehicle. According to the company, Raytheon’s new 3rd-gen FLIR systems will support all next-generation interfaces by using a common thermal sighting system across all vehicle types. Raytheon has provided new FLIR sensors to the U.S. and allied nations.

GPS M-Code signal receives operational acceptance As part of the U.S. military’s effort to modernize the Global Positioning System (GPS), the U.S. Space Force has been upgrading its existing GPS Ground Operational Control System (OCS). The Space Force recently announced Operational Acceptance of the GPS Contingency Operations (COps) upgrade, developed by Lockheed Martin. COps enabled control of the operational GPS constellation, now containing 21 M-Code-capable GPS satellites.

The Space Force’s M-Code Early Use (MCEU) upgrade, delivered earlier this year, will enable the OCS to task, upload, and monitor M-Code within the GPS constellation, as well as support testing and fielding of modernized user equipment, prior to the completion of the next-generation ground control systems.

Optical interconnects to bolster digital microelectronics Researchers from Intel and Ayar Labs working on the Photonics in the Package for Extreme Scalability (PIPES) program for the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) have replaced the traditional electrical input/output (I/O) of a state-of-the-art field programmable gate array (FPGA) with efficient optical signaling interfaces. The demonstration leverages an optical interface developed by Ayar Labs called TeraPHY, an optical I/O chiplet that replaces electrical serializer/deserializer (SERDES) chiplets. These SERDES chiplets traditionally compensate for limited I/O when there is a need for fast data movement, enabling high-speed communications and other capabilities.

Built in GlobalFoundries’ advanced photonics process and using Intel packaging and interconnect technology, the TeraPHY chiplet used for this demonstration is capable of 2 terabits per second (Tbps) of I/O bandwidth at a small fraction of power compared to electrical I/O, according to the companies.

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Figure 6 | Shown: The optically connected FPGA board developed

by Intel and and Ayar Labs. Ayar Labs photo.

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C-UAS philosophy and needs dictate system advancements

By Emma Helfrich, Associate Editor In the counter-unmanned aerial system (C-UAS) arena, the threats they are designed to mitigate depend heavily on the market for which they are intended. A back-and-forth between UAS advancements and growth in the C-UAS industry dictate to manufacturers what these systems need and how much funding it will take to get them there.

What is apparent, however, is autonomous aircraft are becoming more ubiquitous in both military and commercial markets, and along with that so are the systems required to counter them.

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Counter-UAS technology

The Ku-band radar used in this counter-UAS system is ideally suited to detecting the small structures used in compact UASs, such as the control wires, battery pack, motor, and wireless communications system. Image: Blighter Surveillance Systems.

While a “silver bullet” counter-unmanned aerial system (C-UAS) is still far in the future, this reality hasn’t prevented manufacturers from developing philosophies that are tailored to their customers’ needs when faced with an adversarial unmanned aerial system (UAS). The UAS is one of the few platforms that span both commercial and military markets, creating an array of threats to be posed and solved.

At the core of current C-UAS advancements remains the concept of “countering the countermeasure”: UAS and drone designers see it as a push to make their products harder to detect, trace, and destroy, which then results in a reflexive reaction by C-UAS manufacturers to keep with the pace of threat.

UASs, both military and commercial, are designed with the capability to be used for good just as much as they can be used in an adversarial situation. Preventing a UAS from livestreaming a sports event at an open-air stadium is as valid a use for C-UAS systems as preventing a potentially lethal UAS swarm in combat.

With varying threats comes contrasting ways to handle them. Detection and mitigation of UASs and drones through C-UAS systems is a significant consideration for manufacturers when designing to meet user needs, especially when considering which capabilities these systems will need.

When to detect and when to mitigate “The essential requirement for drone mitigation or counter-drone engagement is the ability to point the ‘effector’, whether that is a jammer, gun, projectile net,

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www.mil-embedded.com

Figure 2

SRC’s Silent Archer technology comprises radar, electronic warfare, direction finding, camera, and user display to detect, track, classify, identify, and disrupt UASs, whether a lone target or UAS swarm.

In the commercial realm, C-UAS systems are primarily tasked with detection, primarily due to complications that arise from restrictions associated with urban, civilianpopulated areas. Prisons, airports, and sports stadiums are entities often involved in the C-UAS market; in contrast, those used in the military often involve imminent aerial attack or troop threat.

or interceptor drone, in the exact direction of the intruder drone,” says Mark Radford, cofounder and CTO of Blighter Surveillance Systems (Great Chesterford, U.K.). “This requires a greater capability in the sensor or sensor system to provide 3D coordinates of the target, including range, azimuth, elevation, and direction of travel.” (Figure 1.)

“From a military side, their current threat has been asymmetric warfare,” says Mike Blades, vice president of aerospace, defense, and security at market research firm Frost and Sullivan (San Antonio, Texas). “Say someone buys an $800 drone, puts a homemade bomb on it that they got the materials for themselves, and then, using a $1,000 to $1,200 drone, blows up a $20 million tank. It basically ends up being an airborne IED [improvised explosive device].”

An improvised IED is an example of a threat that a C-UAS would need to mitigate, while a drone flying over a prison with a payload of cellphones and illegal drugs is an example of a detection application. The Gatwick and Heathrow airport incidents of 2018 and 2019, respectively, emphasize the unease that a mere sighting of a drone can cause, guiding manufacturers to design commercial C-UAS systems with robust radar-detection capabilities. In the military realm, the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) is in the market for more lethal approaches (Figure 2) that may include radar and electronic warfare (EW) applications.

“Drones are being used in many ways, from ISR [intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance] missions to direct assaults like we saw with the Saudi oil field attacks,” says Bill Kramer, assistant vice president of C-UAS programs at SRC (Syracuse, N.Y.). “The big issue is that anyone can buy an inexpensive drone and use it for nefarious purposes with very little effort. This is compounded by drone technology that is advancing at a rapid rate, enabling drones to carry larger payloads, fly longer, and navigate without the aid of GPS guidance.”

Figure 1 | Blighter’s 3D radar technology measures target characteristics – including range, azimuth, elevation, and direction of travel – enabling the effector to be targeted with enough accuracy to allow fast engagement and mitigation. www.mil-embedded.com

These types of threats are actually providing the outline for C-UAS advancements.

As UAS and drone makers forge ahead with stealthier, faster, and harder-to-detect products, C-UAS manufacturers are tasked with getting creative in their countermeasures – end users just have to know what to ask for.

What C-UAS customers are looking for Most C-UAS design can be reduced down to radio frequency (RF), radar, and available reaction time. If the end user knows that most adversarial UASs and drones in their area will be attached to a ground-control station, then the system should focus on RF.

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Counter-UAS technology

If the customer knows that threats are coming from UASs and drones that are sent off on wave points without a connection between a controller, then a radar-based system would be more effective.

“Both military and commercial customers don’t know what they want, but they will know it when they see it. This isn’t a facetious statement,” says Michael Carter, CEO of IXI Technology (Yorba Linda, California). “The U.S. Army has been designated as the lead in the development of C-UAS requirements, but there has been no release of a requirements document yet. Systems range from RF, radar, lasers, acoustic, kinetic, optical, or combinations of these, but no one system can meet all users’ needs.” (Figure 3.)

Not only is it difficult for a system to meet all of an end user’s needs, but the speed at which UASs and drones have advanced resulted in a challenging timeline for C-UAS systems to reach deployment. According to Kramer, current fielded systems were deployed under “urgency” requirements to expedite the capabilities to warfighters: With no time to train operators, systems that demonstrate an ease of use have since become a significant trend in the industry.

Innovative C-UAS technologies that reference other trending military customer requirements include no-fly zones, artificial intelligence (AI) integration, wearable capabilities, handheld drone guns (Figure 4), and sensor and data fusion, all with a focus on avoiding and defeating drone swarms.

“On the military side, we’re seeing a lot of testing and research and development going into swarm countermeasures because you want to have the capability to knock out a bunch of drones at the same time,” Blades says. “So you’ll see more things like kinetic mitigation, where you fly a drone into another drone and destroy it; and microwaves, where microwaves just fry all of the electronics in there and you can’t fly it. Lasers, too. As long as you have power, you have ammo.”

As exciting as these novel technologies are, one of the primary obstacles that both C-UAS and UAS and drone advancements have in common are the governmentmandated regulations and restrictions in place to prevent potentially dangerous air traffic and collateral damage.

Regulating military and commercial C-UAS advancements The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) act as the primary regulatory entities of both UAS and C-UAS operation, with a heavy focus on commercial use. Licensing, frequency protocols, and traffic management are some of the methods by which these governing bodies control rogue and potentially dangerous drone use.

“The biggest challenge I see in the coming years is that our skies will fill with drones as their commercial use becomes ubiquitous.” Radford says. “Examples include home deliveries, medical shipments, farming, and potentially air taxis. These legal commercial services will have to be operated within managed airspace, with the term ‘Unified Traffic Management’ (UTM), where manned aircraft mix with unmanned aircraft including drones.”

Radford goes on to explain that, commercially, all UASs will have to become conspicuous: Specifying identification, flight path, and position may very well become a minimum requirement for drone operators and C-UAS efforts, as the jamming and demodulation capabilities available to the military are far more restricted in the commercial sector.

“There are companies that are really succeeding with identifying frequencies because you don’t have to get in the signal and demodulate it. There’s a lot of gray area

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Figure 3 | IXI’s Music ON is a cost-effective, long-range UAS detection and mitigation system that responds to threats beyond the horizon.

Figure 4 | IXI’s DroneKiller enables defense and security Forces to thwart adversaries’ use of drones for surveillance and direct attacks, the company asserts.

there, because there are many different opinions,” Blades says. “If you demodulate the signal, but you’re not blocking it, are you interfering with it? There’s no doubt about interfering if you’re trying to jam a signal. So these drone companies are constantly changing with new frequency protocols.”

IXI’s Carter claims that the large and expensive radar, laser, and optics systems can keep pace with technologically robust UASs and drones, but noted that the many limitations to these systems – including who can use them and where – remain in consideration when manufacturing them.

“The issue of need versus the ability to buy and deploy is compounded because of regulatory requirements for the commercial sector, and in some cases, military applications,” Carter says. “For example, the commercial sector can purchase systems that detect [UASs], but cannot purchase any system that interdicts a www.mil-embedded.com

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Counter-UAS technology

[UAS]. Moreover, FCC and FAA regulations prohibit the use of interdiction systems by commercial users. In most cases this includes law enforcement. Even military users must comply with many, if not all, of the same requirements while on U.S. soil.”

of C-UAS systems are needed is driving growth in the industry, and manufacturers are in fact taking advantage of the demand by joining forces.

In a foreign theater of war, however, C-UAS regulations and restrictions can be less stringent for the UAS. According to Kramer, the DoD is processing a complete assessment of C-UAS capabilities fielded under urgency requirements to develop regulations for C-UAS solutions.

Once finalized, the findings will determine the direction of military funding.

Until a strict set of regulations for both military and commercial UASs is developed, manufacturers of C-UAS systems are still up in the air regarding the kinds of threats they need to mitigate. For now, the DoD is viewing it as an exciting opportunity for exploration. MES

“There’s a lot of collaboration in the market,” Blades says. “There are not a lot of companies that make all of the different sensors that go onto a C-UAS. Most of the defense companies either integrate, or they have one system of their own and integrate things from other people. There’s a lot of partnerships going on.”

C-UAS funding dominates DoD spending “Globally, right now, I have about a 25% CAGR [compound annual growth rate] through 2024. A lot of that is driven by militaries that require C-UAS catching up with what the U.S. is doing,” Blades says.

“Maybe a lot of that even being purchasing C-UAS systems through foreign military sales. If you look at just commercial, it’s a very small percentage of the overall. The report I put out last year has about 20% on the commercial side and 80% for defense.”

The military is looking for C-UAS systems that are quick to mount, easy to operate, and effective. The speed at which UASs are advancing has therefore pushed the DoD to shell out significant portions of the defense budget for C-UAS research and development.

“In 2019, 70% to 80% of military spending was allocated to research and development for C-UAS systems. A lot of companies came in and tested their systems in different locations,” Blades says.

“Most of the companies you see that are successful have demonstrated some sort of a capability. Basically, any system that has been able to go through a military proof of concept and has shown that they actually work – those are the ones that are doing well.”

Currently, that’s the primary goal for C-UAS systems – to work as promoted.

The speed at which increasing numbers www.mil-embedded.com

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MIL TECH TRENDS

Sensor payloads for military unmanned systems get smarter

By Sally Cole, Senior Editor Size, weight, power, and cost (SWaP-C) considerations are still driving military sensor payload designs for unmanned systems, but sensors are getting much “smarter” and processing tasks are now increasingly being performed right at the payload level.

Sensor payloads for military unmanned systems – both unmanned aircraft systems (UASs) and ground systems – are evolving rapidly as they embrace artificial intelligence (AI) and provide processing capabilities. The overall goal behind designing sensor payloads is the delivery of persistent situational awareness to the warfighter.

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Reducing SWaP in unmanned sensor payloads

The autonomous MQ-9 Reaper from General Atomics Aeronautical Systems (GA-ASI) carries an electronic warfare payload.

Photo courtesy of GA-ASI.

Military sensor payloads tend to run the gamut from optical sensors to radars to signal intelligence to a communications relay.

“Cameras, antennas, and field-programmable gate array (FPGA)/signal processing electronics are the hardware building blocks, with software and visualization being key to deliver a great user experience to the warfighter,” explains Satish Krishnan, vice president of Mission Payloads & Exploitation for General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc. (GA-ASI – Poway, California).

Along with the evolution of machine learning and artificial intelligence algorithms, there’s currently an emphasis on a high degree of automation in development as it applies to sensor interaction and information delivery to the user. “Robust datalinks play a critical role in information dissemination to where and when it’s needed, even within challenging, contested environments,” Krishnan says.

FLIR Systems (Arlington, Virginia) makes products that enhance perception and awareness; the company’s thermal-camera cores are at the heart of many sensor payloads to provide enhanced awareness and nighttime operation.

“We also make sensors for chemical, biological, radiation, nuclear, and explosives (CBRNE) detection,” says Tung Ng, director of engineering for FLIR Unmanned Ground Systems. “We’ve integrated them on our unmanned systems as well, and there’s a growing need for that kind of detection. But these days, it’s not enough for sensors to just send the data out. Customers are expecting sensors to

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Signal intelligence (SIGINT) and communications relay are examples in which the reduction in size and weight of electronics are leading to a new class of affordable applications on UASs from GA-ASI. “Even with the reduction in size, certain applications like electronic warfare (EW) jamming requires lots of prime power from the platform to perform the mission effectively,” Krishnan says. “So it’s critical for UASs to have tens of kilowatts of prime power available to power all the different payloads.”

Another SWaP-C trend is to reuse the same hardware – for example, antenna apertures – to do more with different adaptive software loads dictating what the sensor does.

“The military is continuing to push the cost angle,” Ng notes. “We’re also seeing an ongoing trend toward weight and size reduction. Sensor payloads can do a lot more in the same size now than they could even just a few years ago, which makes the design more challenging.”

Figure 1 | An example of a system with multiple CBRNE sensors is the FLIR Centaur, a Man Transportable Robotic System Increment II (MTRS Inc II) solution.

Remotely operated, the system provides a standoff capability to detect, confirm, identify, and dispose of hazards. It is currently only available to the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD). Photo courtesy of FLIR Systems.

be smarter, which means including processing as part of the sensor payload.”

(Figure 1.)

There’s also a trend toward military sensor payloads using standardized interfaces – interoperability profiles (IOPs) – for unmanned ground systems that require both more intelligence and processing at the sensor payload.

SWaP-C trends The trend toward shrinking size, weight, power, and cost (SWaP-C) – with a heavy emphasis on the reduction of cost – for military uses has been going on for years.

Sensor system design challenges Sensor systems pose a wide variety of design challenges for both UASs and ground systems.

Within the UAS realm, “every sensor system brings unique design considerations into play – from environmental considerations including thermal management to the unique radio frequency/cosite compatibility considerations to how data is displayed and distributed,” Krishnan says.

While the integration aspects of sensor systems onto UAS pose challenges that need to be overcome, “an oft-ignored aspect that needs to be well-designed up front is the mechanism to display and disseminate the data to the users that need the information,” Krishnan points out. “Making the warfighter user experience seamless is probably the biggest design challenge that sensor systems pose.”

On the ground end of things, “packing sensors tightly is definitely a challenge, but primarily because of the thermal management, interference, and the power-management issues of getting into a small form factor and providing more capability than we’ve ever had before,” Ng says. “It’s definitely a challenge.” (Figure 2.)

Modularity can also get a bit tricky, “because you can’t optimize for all of the parameters when you have a standard that you’re driving toward,” Ng adds. “But it’s something that’s really benefited the community and industry.”

Figure 2

“Customers are increasingly requiring UAS to perform multiple roles efficiently,” Krishnan says. “Since endurance is arguably the most important attribute of a UAS, designing systems that are efficient in terms of size and weight are very important, so multiple sensors can be carried at the same time.”

As Moore’s Law continues to drive down the size of electronics, “applications that used to require racks of equipment are now becoming extremely small,” Krishnan points out. “This is enabling UASs to perform missions that in the past required large wide-bodied aircraft.” www.mil-embedded.com

For reduced-SWaP applications FLIR Systems engineers designed the rugged StormCaster-L, an ultra-low-light imaging payload with line-of-site stabilization and range of motion. It supports the SkyRanger R70 and R80D.

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MIL TECH TRENDS

Reducing SWaP in unmanned sensor payloads

Yet another challenge: The military has a fast design schedule, which often pushes designers to use COTS [commercial off-the-shelf] components and integrate those parts into sensor payloads to get to market faster.

New sensor capabilities Sensor systems are rapidly heading in the direction of becoming versatile, softwaredefined systems with shared hardware.

“Multiple different applications like radar and SIGINT are using common processing boxes, with software personality modules dictating the application in real time,” Krishnan says. “Also, with the advent of artificial intelligence articles and machine learning, software is able to make important decisions in real time to adapt to the environment and deliver the capability needed. For example, a communications relay radio can now, on the fly, decide to switch to a different waveform when it detects jamming on a different waveform. Agility is the name of the game.”

Sensors are getting much smarter, with computing power at the edge. “Sensor payloads have more processing and a network stack enables protocols that allow you to kind of declare your own capabilities, but they’re also running neural networks for object detection and classification,” Ng says.

Edge networking plays a key role here because that’s where things are heading with smart sensors and AI. “Sensors need to be more intelligent – in terms of learning from past data and using analytics to produce results that would normally require a dedicated team to analyze and figure out … but now it’s all built in at the edge with the sensors,” Ng says.

One of the most surprising things recently has been the general acceptance of unmanned systems, “because it took a while to get folks acclimated,” Ng says.

“But the adoption and use of neural networks and AI is also surprising because it’s gaining traction quickly. I’m pleased, because this capability is very valuable.

In terms of designs, it’s just another natural evolution of sensors becoming smarter.”

FLIR is at the forefront of doing this with sensors and enabling smarter capabilities.

Another new capability Ng is seeing emerge is sensor fusion, which “combines multiple sensors and sensor data – passing data between sensors and combining it – to get much more useful information than any individual sensor can provide,” he explains.

Advances on the horizon Within the next 10 years, expect to see smarter sensors, more autonomous capabilities, and even more analytics.

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“Airborne early warning, communications relay, and EW are a few examples of applications that will be done as well as by UAS, which will have the added benefit of not putting lives at risk.”

– Satish Krishnan, GA-ASI

FLIR’s object detection and recognition will become even more accurate, Ng says, which will “allow unmanned systems’ sensors to do a lot more together to relieve the burden of the soldiers and provide new analytics and capabilities. Sensors, payloads, and systems will

predict things like when they’re going to fail and also detect threats. They’ll be able to provide capabilities that aren’t there now. We’re just starting to scratch the surface on those capabilities.”

Reducing the cognitive workload is another trend for unmanned sensor payloads: “Unmanned systems are supposed to be a force multiplier, and we’re starting to get there,” Ng says. “Systems are smart enough to relieve the burden so soldiers can focus on other things or control more systems at the same time, doing missions together, and there’s more interoperation between ground and air assets to perform a task that the operator can direct.”

The industry can also expect to see UASs start to assume roles that are performed by wide-bodied aircraft today. “Airborne early warning, communications relay, and EW are a few examples of applications that will be done as well as by UAS, which will have the added benefit of not putting lives at risk,” Krishnan says.

The reduction in the size of electronics and the surge in the U.S. Department of Defense’s interest in and use of AI are really driving the art of the possible of what sensors can do on UASs, Krishnan points out.

“Machine-aided decision-making at the tactical edge will be required for the user base to keep up with the growing wealth of sensor payload data that is available,” Krishnan adds. “The ability to allow multiple sensors to collaborate in real time will change the paradigm of how UASs are used. It will allow ground operators to make quicker decisions based on fused information streams, rather than spending time taking multiple disparate data streams and piecing information together.” MES

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MIL TECH TRENDS

Enabling infrared systems in UASs through SWaP optimization

By Ross Bannatyne

Unmanned aerial system (UAS) platforms continue to reduce their size, weight, and power consumption (SWaP) and enhance their performance and functionality. These improvements are enabled by a new generation of sensing technology; one example is integration of high-performance infrared (IR) imaging systems onto reducedscale aircraft.

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Infrared (IR) systems measure thermal radiation to create images. Taking it further, high-performance IR systems must be capable of measuring the tiniest levels of thermal radiation that are emitted from distant objects; to do so, these systems need to be cooled. This cooling is required to reduce the level of thermal energy that is generated in the IR imager and background, so that the signal received is much higher than the thermally induced background and noise that is generated in the IR detector. Not surprisingly, conventional cryogenic cooling systems can contribute a significant level of SWaP to a UAS. Now, new types of digital readout integrated circuit (DROIC) transduction technology has been developed that minimizes the SWaP of the cryogenics and is driving the reduction of SWaP to the point that cooled IR cameras can be used in progressively smaller UAS. The improvements in size, weight, and power consumption of UAS has a meaningful impact on the speed and range of the aircraft. SWaP improvements also enable smaller, lower-cost UASs to accommodate high-performance IR cameras that are critical for identification of threats, acquisition of targets, and multiobject tracking.

Along with the obvious UAS trends – shrinking the footprint, enhanced flight time, and additional functionality – major interest exists in UASs that can navigate without human pilot intervention. IR integration is necessary for autonomous operation in order to deal with adverse atmospheric conditions contrary to safe autonomous navigation.

Transduction technology Advances in transduction technology enable IR imaging systems that have a major effect on UAS capabilities. One factor is the reduction in size and weight of a cooled IR camera system: Smaller, higher-resolution, and higher-dynamic-range focal plane arrays (FPAs) can now be used that produce significantly better images while simplifying the cooling requirements of the system. The improvement in

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performance of the DROIC, through such technology as advanced sampling algorithms, drives a meaningful reduction in the size and complexity of the cooling system, known as an integrated Dewar cooler assembly (IDCA). A typical payload of a small rotatingwing UAS is less than fifteen pounds, so optimization of the IDCA is an important factor in enabling the use of cooled IR cameras on this class of UAS. The DROIC itself is a transduction device that, along with a detector, constitute the FPA. Photons radiated or reflected from the target are collected by the detector and converted to electrons. The transduction that occurs is the conversion of thermal energy to electrical energy. The amount of thermal energy that is gathered from a target (as much as several miles away) is very small and is measured in photons. These photons create a proportionate number of electrons in the FPA. The resulting electrons are stored in integrated capacitors in every pixel in the array; a 1,080 by 720 array has almost a million pixels.

The electrical charge stored on these capacitors is converted to a digital code. The infrared image is comprised of the digital code data that is collected across the whole array of pixels (or “frame”) and is transmitted out of the DROIC at a very high frame rate to enable access the image data in real time. This data will be displayed on a monitor to view the image and may also be processed using algorithms to detect targets that may not be obvious to the human eye.

Given that the image data is comprised of a finite number of electrons created by photons emanating from the target, it becomes clearer why cooling is required to reduce the number of thermally generated charge carriers that occur naturally – at any temperature above absolute zero, -273.15 ºC – in the FPA itself. The sensitivity of the imaging system is affected considerably by the suppression of noise in the FPA, in that optimization of noise performance has a direct impact on the ability to extend the distance and altitude that targets can be acquired. Even marginal improvements to FPA specifications such as noise equivalent temperature difference (NETD), a measure of how well very small differences in thermal radiation can be distinguished, can significantly affect the overall performance of the system.

Another major innovation in DROIC technology that is compelling for UASs is the new ICs’ ability to identify and accurately track multiple targets simultaneously. The most advanced devices will provide a global shutter (snapshot) mode with unlimited small windows for multiobject tracking. The size of the windows can be adjusted depending on the situation at hand; for example, an unlimited number of 32 by 32-pixel windows could be tracked at approximately 9,000 frames per second (fps) per window. Keep in mind that a 4K HDR TV operates at 60 fps. The performance of multiobject tracking at high speed is important as small rotary-wing UASs extend their speed well beyond 200 mph and are faced with identifying higher-speed moving targets and threats. Larger UASs, such as fixed-wing reduced-scale aircraft, are also increasing their airspeed capability. When smaller windows are used for tracking, it is also possible to optimize power consumption, which can have an impact on extending the range of the UAS. Advances in high dynamic range performance of DROICs is another important attribute for UAS IR camera system requirements. A wide dynamic range increases the ability to identify and resolve different objects in a scene that have extremely different thermal characteristics, because the fact is that UASs may be subjected to a number of threats simultaneously. One of these threats may be much larger, hotter, and easier to identify and track than a smaller, less obvious threat that is of comparable concern.

A wide dynamic range enables the IR camera system to observe and track both a surface-to-air missile and a sniper at the same time without losing track of the sniper, which would have the more thermally subtle footprint.

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Digital readout integrated circuit technology Let’s look at an example: An up-to-date DROIC is the type of device that is used in advanced infrared imaging systems such as those required to enable small, lightweight, cryogenically cooled UAS systems. www.mil-embedded.com

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The large block in the center (Figure 1) is the active imaging array that consists of 1,280 columns and 720 rows of pixels. Each pixel with its own support circuitry is contained within the 8 µm “pixel pitch.” (Analog circuit blocks are shown in blue and digital circuit blocks are shown in green. Note that the column “ADC [analogto-digital] circuitry” is a combination of both.) Early readout ICs used analog outputs only – they were called ROICs rather than DROICs and could not support the benefits that mixed-signal, integrated analog and digital functionality provide. The added digital functionality enables a simpler and higher speed interface to the system as well as better noise performance and lower power consumption.

The digital functionality also enables a range of operating modes for the DROIC. This multimodal operation capability is important as it allows the IR camera system on the UAS to be optimized for different surveillance conditions. For example, “high dynamic range dual integration mode” runs two integration patterns simultaneously Figure 1 | SRT packet structure diagram.

on a checkerboard pattern of pixels for detecting threats that have extremely different thermal characteristics. When a target is detected and enhanced sensitivity is required, the signal-to-noise ratio can be improved using “external correlated double sampling” mode along with multiple oversampling methods. The digital functionality also allows range-gated imaging where tracking a long-range moving target through obscurants such as smoke is made possible when coupled with an active illuminator.

Another important capability of this type of DROIC that is important to UAS systems is called windowing. The large (720 p) array is important to provide excellent image resolution, but the whole frame may not be required and it is important to zoom into the detected object, observe it more closely, and track it at higher speed. A window can be created that allows a smaller subset of pixels to be conveyed at extremely high transmission rates. For small windows, a transmission speed of over 36,000 fps is possible on a state-of-the-art DROIC for UAS. A block diagram of the signal chain that is implemented in the DROIC of Figure 1 is shown in Figure 2. To the left of the vertical dotted line is the active imaging array. The active imaging array itself has a programmable well capacity, global shutter operation, and both an integrate-while-read (IWR) and integrate-then-read (ITR) pixel structure.

This setup gives the DROIC a great deal of flexibility about how the information emanating from the target is processed

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depending on the nature of the target, its distance from the UAS, and how it is to be observed.

Each pixel is read out in parallel, rowby-row to a column buffer. The column buffer presents a clean low-noise signal to a programmable gain amplifier (PGA) that sets the polarity and applies gains.

Advanced DROICs can use different detector types that can have different polarities (either “N-on-P” or “P-on-N”) known as dual polarity. It is also possible to detect different infrared wavelengths (for example, both midwave and longwave) using the same DROIC. This situation is known as dual-band and is very useful for enhancing the UAS IR camera system imaging characteristics to create a two-color solution. A practical example of the two-color solution would be to use LWIR for good visibility through poor atmospheric conditions (smoke, weather, turbulence, etc.) and MWIR for better range under good atmospheric conditions.

The PGA outputs are presented to a column-level 14-bit ADC to create digital codes, a configuration known as a column-parallel architecture. Such a column-parallel approach eliminates high-speed internal analog buses, which is used for reducing power consumption and supports very-high-speed digital data transmission. The digital video processor (DVP) performs linearization of the codes and is used to accomplish digital signal processing such as averaging and oversampling. The high-speed serializers are used to create streams of video data in a standard format that are then transmitted off-chip on the low voltage differential signaling (LVDS) pins to support very robust high-speed communications that are easy to interface with the DROIC. Figure 3 shows a part of a newly designed DROIC die to enable UAS imaging systems. The device has been manufactured in CMOS technology but has not yet been hybridized with a detector to create a focal plane array (FPA). After the FPA is constituted by attaching the DROIC to a detector by means of indium bumps, it will be mounted in an IDCA www.mil-embedded.com

Figure 2 | Signal chain of state-of-the-art DROIC to enable UAS IR camera systems.

Figure 3

Composite of DROIC and zoomed-in pixels.

for use at cryogenic temperatures. A portion of the pixel array is shown in the lower right-hand size of the picture. The pixel width is 8 µm; four of these pixels have been magnified and shown in the circular picture insert. The indium bumps are connected to each pixel so that the detector material sits directly on top and delivers photocurrent directly into the pixel.

Future trends No need for a crystal ball to see that the size, weight, and power consumption of small UAS will continue to reduce while the functionality, speed, and range will increase – this is a given. The more significant evolvement is the ability to add lightweight cutting-edge infrared imaging functionality that enables a step-function improvement in capabilities and opens the door to autonomous flight. The acronym “DROIC” doesn’t roll off the tongue as sweetly as “CPU” or “GPU,” but in terms of a highly integrated mixed-signal enabling chip, the advances in DROIC technology are just as significant and will be seen shortly on the next generation of UASs equipped with state-of-the-art lightweight IR cameras. MES Ross Bannatyne is director of business development for Senseeker Engineering. He previously served as director of marketing for VORAGO Technologies. He was educated at the University of Edinburgh and the University of Texas at Austin.

Ross has published a college text called “Using Microprocessors and Microcomputers” and a book on automotive electronics called “Electronic Control Systems” (published by the Society of Automotive Engineers); he also holds patents in failsafe electronic systems and microcontroller development tools. Readers may contact the author at Ross@senseeker.com.

Senseeker Engineering • www.senseeker.com

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MIL TECH TRENDS

The need for interoperability standards in SATCOM for unmanned systems

By Rick Lober Unmanned systems are increasingly being integrated into Department of Defense (DoD) strategies. Counterterrorism missions, for example, would not have achieved success without these unmanned platforms. As the DoD, industry and academia develop more advanced technologies in support of unmanned systems and platforms, including satellite communications (SATCOM), it is imperative that interoperability standards be developed and implemented to accelerate unmanned technology. Hughes Defense sees adopting SATCOM-related opensystems standards as central to achieving interoperable, resilient communications for unmanned systems. Using such open architectures, especially those that support resilient communications for unmanned aircraft systems (UASs), will strengthen warfighting to manage today’s near-peer adversaries.

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Since the Gulf War during the 1990s, military users have grown accustomed to satellite communications (SATCOM) applications, from fixed to new mobility applications. As network-centric warfare, data-driven systems, and user demands have converged, bandwidth consumed per 5,000 military members has exploded from single-digit megabits per second (Mbits/sec) usage in the 1990s to more than 350 Mbits/sec in 2020.1 Soldiers are especially reliant on higher data rates for communications on the move (COTM), where users can stay connected with video information as well as voice while traversing the battlefield. U.S. Special Operations Command J6 director John Wilcox spoke about mobility in May 2017, referencing SATCOM’s value in successfully executing special operations in the expeditionary environment where “… operators must be able to operate anywhere at any time.”2 Unmanned aircraft systems (UASs) are the next SATCOM frontier: For nearly two decades, the Department of Defense (DoD) and the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) together have focused on incorporating UASs across every warfighting domain based on their success in the recent past. We now see UAS coming into standard use, and with that, increasing demand for onboard, beyond-line-of-sight (BLoS) SATCOM solutions.

Interoperability of SATCOM systems is essential for UAS applications. Standards will accelerate battlefield decision-making so data can be collected and used for reliable, rapid deployment operations, focused on delivering what is dubbed E.P.I.C. Speed (Enterprise, Partnerships, Innovation, Culture, and Speed) to protect against persistent, technologically advanced adversaries.

Early efforts at interoperability As UASs have become more militarily valuable, attempts have been made to establish SATCOM standards to support the distinct needs of unmanned

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As of early 2016, DoD initiated an effort across all military services to create common standards, architectures, and technologies for unmanned systems, focused primarily on UASs, including the communications architecture. This work is slowly progressing with incremental funding to improve muchneeded interoperability for all domains. However, attention must be paid to interoperability across three key areas: antennas/modems, mechanical interfaces, and networks. be paid to interoperability across three key areas: antennas/modems, mechanical interfaces, and networks.

Three keys to SATCOM interoperability for UAS The first key to UAS SATCOM interoperability is open standards for airborne satellite antennas and modems. For UAS applications, the SATCOM terminal modem and antenna must work together closely to transmit geographic location, satellite handoff, beam quality, and other critical data. Long-duration COTM applications like those using aircraft rely on this coordination to ensure successful satellite beam switching while the aircraft moves.

To meet these needs, antenna manufacturers and modem providers offered proprietary protocols to support DoD’s early tech modernization, severely limiting end-user missions. A 2005 GAO report noted that UAS could not easily transmit and receive data among different communications, sensor, and ground systems as these technologies were not interoperable. NATO recognized this problem and in 2007 created the Standardization Agreement 4586 to define the interface between a ground control system and an unmanned system in an aerial vehicle. In 2008, the DoD issued an “Unmanned Systems Interoperability” profile to implement standards for UAS open architecture specifications. U.S. Central Command field experience with UAS during Persian Gulf operations contained limited communications interoperability, as service-specific UAS development programs did not address broad enterprise-wide needs.

As of early 2016, DoD initiated an effort across all military services to create common standards, architectures, and technologies for unmanned systems, focused primarily on UASs, including the communications architecture. This work is slowly progressing with incremental funding to improve much-needed interoperability for all domains. However, attention must www.mil-embedded.com

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choice and flexibility and tying users to one service provider. Decision-makers have learned that such a siloed approach does not deliver the critical resilience they need in all environments for all applications. Designing these hardware elements using an open systems architecture approach enables technology evolution to support longterm modernization, lowering costs and ensuring timely technology enhancements.

The Open Antenna to Modem Interface Protocol (Open-AMIP) development process, initiated by equipment manufacturers in 2006, represents progress in creating best-in-class airborne solutions. The DoD has started to adopt commercial OpenAMIP antenna control units, improving SATCOM resilience for COTM as well as providing the best available technology for an enterprise-wide SATCOM architecture.

This standard can maximize the interoperability DoD and OSD have outlined for UAS and deliver much-needed operational advantages in today’s contested airborne battlespace.

A second important portion is standardized mechanical interfaces for SATCOM terminals on UASs. Thousands of aircraft worldwide will add airborne SATCOM terminals in the coming decade, creating the need for more open standards for the mechanical interfaces. UAS platforms will require this same technical coordination. Aircraft industry suppliers are working with SATCOM terminal manufacturers to set new standards to simplify and streamline adoption of high-data rate SATCOM. This includes ARINC and other standards that define how to architect and interconnect software and electrical interfaces.

Environmental standards must be defined as well to ensure airborne SATCOM equipment can overcome hurdles ranging from extreme operating temperature, high shock and vibration, to extremely low EMI profile, lightning immunity and other safety and security challenges.

The third piece of this UAS SATCOM puzzle is network interoperability: SATCOM interoperability for UAS also requires network considerations to support efficient information sharing and flexible mission objectives. According to the Army’s future UAS strategy, the overarching objective is to synchronize UAS equipment with the human and networking elements. Commonality and an open-architecture systems approach are fundamental to the Army’s UAS strategy.

Open design enables potential control and integration of multiple platforms simultaneously, even across operational domains. Open architectures also enable component upgrades to be interchangeable among different platforms.

In the near term, DoD services will retrofit parts for interchangeability and modularity in legacy systems. Such network interoperability will also mitigate vulnerabilities and prevent data disruption or manipulation. (Figure 1.)

The interoperability imperative for UAS UASs are poised to support achievement of the nation’s security goals, but siloed SATCOM solutions present a barrier that must be overcome. The Joint Staff – in

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2017 - - - - - - - - - - 2029 - - - - - - - - - - 2042 NEAR-TERM

INTEROPERABILITY

Common/Open Architectures/ AI Frameworks Modularity & Parts Interchangeability Compliance/Verification & Validation Data Transport Integration Data Rights

MID-TERM

FAR-TERM

• Standardized C2 & Reference Architectures

• Support Seamless, Agile, Autonomous Human-Machine Collaboration and Inter-Machine Collaboration

• Retrofit Existing Systems • Plan Modularity into New Systems

• Rapid Upgrades and Configuration Changes

• New TEVV Appraoch • New V&V Tools & Techniques

• Highly Complex Autonomous Sytems TEVV

• Common Data Repositories • Integrated End-to-End Delivery

• Anti-Jamming • Low Probability of Intercept/Detection

• Secure Needed Data Rights •Evolve Data Rights Policy

• Maximum Mission Support Flexibility

Figure 1 | Interoperability Roadmap: Comprehensive Roadmap for Interoperability, Unmanned Systems Integrated Roadmap FY 2017-2042.

Source: Defense Daily.

documents released in early 2019 that focused on DoD’s satellite communications – mentioned interoperability several times. These references included SATCOM system planning which must leverage technology improvements and assist in synchronizing terminal development and fielding to maximize operational benefits like stronger terminal control, greater situational awareness, heightened efficiency, and enhanced protection. Warfighters require rapid improvements to reconnect isolated war zones within a few days versus a few weeks or months.

Hughes Defense has introduced modem and service management technology that enables autonomy and flexibility for enhanced, protected communications – even using legacy modems and waveforms. The Hughes Flexible Modem Interface (FMI) leverages advanced artificial intelligence (AI) and softwaredefined networking so terminals can select a modem and service autonomously following policy rules assigned to various factors, such as mission priority, satellite availability, cost considerations, and active threats.

To meet a wide variety of mobility requirements – including UASs – the company’s HM System employs a commercially based, open-standards architecture with a software-definable modem and advanced waveform and a frequency bandagnostic platform.

Standardizing protocols and network connection types will offer significant www.mil-embedded.com

cost and operational efficiencies by requiring fewer hardware types to operate, maintain, and refresh. This fact applies to the DoD’s approximately 17,000 wideband user terminals managed across 135 designs. The DoD spends an average of $4 billion each year to acquire and sustain wideband satellite communications capabilities, including developing and fielding military satellite systems, contracting for commercial SATCOM services, and acquiring and operating satellite ground terminals.

Antenna and radio frequency interface-related costs account for approximately 50% of the overall development and fielding cost for a new terminal. With these numbers, imagine the possibilities interoperability will yield.

What’s next?

Future warfare will hinge on critical, efficient interactions across warfighting systems all along the military enterprise. An interoperable foundation will ensure timely exchange of information among information gatherers, decision-makers, planners, and warfighters, and spur future opportunities for interoperability as new mission needs arise for both UASs and communications systems. Although challenging to develop and implement, interoperability standards will lead to open architectures, innovation, and cost savings for UAS SATCOM. MES References 1 2

https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a488621.pdf https://asianmilitaryreview.com/2018/03/satcom-on-the-move

Rick Lober is the Vice President and General Manager of the Defense and Intelligence Systems Division (DISD) at Hughes Network Systems. In this role, he is responsible for applying the company’s broad range of SATCOM technologies and services to the worldwide defense marketplace and the intelligence community. This includes both fixed Ku-, Ka-, and X-band VSAT and mobilesat products and systems. Applications cover satellite communications-on-the-move for both ground-based and airborne platforms along with numerous classified development programs. He has more than 25 years of experience with both COTS-based and full MIL communications and intelligence products, systems, and major programs, starting as a design engineer and progressing to an executive role. Readers may reach the author at rick.lober@hughes.com.

Hughes Network Systems www.hughes.com

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INDUSTRY SPOTLIGHT

Interconnect technologies for unmanned systems

caption

Title

By John McHale, Editorial Director

Full-motion video distribution for defense using open-source Secure Reliable Transport abstract

By Jack Welsh

ISO/IEC 13818 Part 1 (ITU-T The Recommendation H.222.0) – released in 1995 – describes the synchronization of audio and video using a Transport Stream container structure (TS, MPEG2-TS, m2ts). The Transport Stream is unique in that it serves as a container for streaming video and as a container for static video files.

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The Transport Stream container structure is highly extensible with support for synchronization of video, multiple audio tracks, and multiple data payloads.

In 2006, when the Motion Imagery Standards Board (MISB) – tasked by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) with making informed recommendations to the defense and intelligence community regarding video, imagery, and ancillary data – needed to select a standard container format for defense full-motion video (FMV), the Transport Stream was an obvious choice and continues to be the best available option.

The most widely adopted transport-layer protocol for carriage of Transport Stream payloads remains UDP or User Datagram Protocol. UDP has a number of key benefits in the national defense video context: › › › ›

UDP is a low latency transport-layer protocol in contrast to TCP Unidirectional transmission (via satellite, etc) is natively supported by UDP UDP requires minimal application overhead Point-to-multipoint communication is natively supported by the UDP Multicast address space (which facilitates a dominant amount of FMV delivery)

However, UDP also has inherent limitations that continue to trouble defense video distribution workflows:

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› Designing and debugging the multicast routing infrastructure is a very advanced network engineering skillset › Multicast is not supported by most of the VPN technologies that are heavily employed in secure remote contributor/receiver configurations. The workaround for multicast/VPN is tunneling, which entirely negates the intended efficiency of multicast. › Network telemetry and/or video telemetry is not resident in the UDP protocol which makes root cause diagnosis of “bad video” or “no video” difficult in complex deployment topologies that use a combination of physical-layer transmission mediums (satellite, wireless, wired) and highly variable network configurations. › The latest generation of video CODECs (H.265) is less resilient to the variance in time delay between data packets (jitter) to which UDP transmissions are most vulnerable.

SRT to handle low-latency video The Secure Reliable Transport Protocol (SRT), released as open source in April 2017, sought to address the challenges of live low-latency video transmission over unpredictable networks through the implementation of transport-layer mechanisms to enable packet-loss recovery and signal-timing reconstruction. (Figure 1.)

Traditional mechanisms used to address signal-timing corruption in transit (jitter) have previously been available in the form of network-layer buffers and application-layer buffers. Buffer implementations and configuration are application-specific and the manifestation of video degradation resulting from jitter is not uniform across applications. For example, the VLC application (a multimedia framework) responds to jitter by dropping frames, reducing perceived frame rate while maintaining frame integrity.

The ffmpeg application responds to the same amount of jitter with video artifacts, maintaining real-time frame rate while reducing frame integrity. In both instances, the resultant video product is unusable for the purposes of processing, exploitation, and dissemination (PED). Since jitter compensation is native to the SRT protocol, tuning individual application buffers on a per-connection basis would not be required in the aforementioned example. (Figure 2.)

SRT is a substantially modified version of UDP-based Data Transfer (UDT) protocol.

UDT was designed for high-throughput file transmission over unpredictable networks and aimed to maximize use of channel capacity. Real-time video packet generation is a function of configured video bit rate and is slow when compared to file-read speeds.

For this reason, SRT implements changes to the buffer depletion and congestion control mechanisms in UDT and adds flow-control and payload-encryption mechanisms.

From the perspective of a network administrator, an SRT data packet is a standard UDP packet with UDT header information contained inside the UDP data payload.

Figure 1 | The Secure Reliable Transport (SRT) protocol was designed to handle live low-latency video over unpredictable networks.

Figure 2 | H.265 encoded signal (720p30, 1 Mbps) delivered via RAW UDP (left) and SRT (right). www.mil-embedded.com

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Simplified firewall traversal The SRT connection employs a sender/receiver construct. (Figure 3.) The sender is designated as the SRT endpoint initiating the connection, not necessarily the endpoint that is originating the video stream. SRT connection setup implements Network Address Translation Traversal (NAT-T), a technique for establishing and maintaining IP connections across gateways (firewalls, for example) that implement NAT. Support for NAT-T enables SRT video consumption applications (VLC, for example) located behind a firewall to call out to SRT video producers like video encoders that are configured as a listener without the need for explicit allow UDP rules for ingress traffic on specified firewall ports. (Figure 4.)

SRT stream telemetry By nature of a “connection,” network video administrators receive positive confirmation that nodes in the video distribution chain are communicating and derive connection health from SRT telemetry. This notice is crucial because diagnosis of outages and degradation in defense FMV distribution chains is often required following network security updates or network equipment replacement; pinpointing the culprit network segment, much less the culprit network device, in short order without any telemetry is a tradecraft known to few elite network video operators and vendors in the defense community. Distillation of the defense video distribution architecture into statisticsproducing, connection-oriented communications between video senders and video receivers makes diagnostic tasks palatable to entry-level network operators.

Latency and flow control The important distinction between SRT bidirectional connections and HTTP/TCP connections are latency and flow control. HTTP/TCP streaming implementations often observe as long as 30 seconds of end-to-end delay due to multiple processing steps and buffers along the signal path. Moreover, latency can vary with link conditions due to the TCP requirement that all bytes are completely delivered in order. HTTP/TCP does not allow video to skip over bad bytes; instead, the protocol will endlessly attempt to request missing data resulting in “rebuffering” during crowded network conditions. Video signals can survive a few lost bytes and SRT connections can correct or ignore (worst case) missing data in the interest of maintaining a target connection latency. SRT connection latency, while fixed, is adaptable to network conditions through explicit configuration that can be optimized from link telemetry.

SRT uses AES [Advanced Encryption Standard] in counter mode (AES-CTR) with a short-lived key to encrypt media streams. SRT encrypts the media stream at the transmission payload level (UDP payload of MPEG-TS/UDP encapsulation, which is

Figure 3 | SRT packet structure diagram.

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Figure 3 | SRT packet structure diagram.

about 7 MPEG-TS packets of 188 bytes each). A small packet header is required to keep the synchronization of the cipher counter between endpoints and no padding is required by counter-mode ciphers. Secure remote video contribution and video reception packages often rely on Virtual Private Network (VPN) connections to protect video streams in transit. In some instances, defense security policy dictates tunnel-in-tunnel for added information assurance. Traditional IPSec/ESP VPNs consume substantial overhead from padding and require GRE tunnels (added overhead) to enable the transmission of UDP/multicast. The AES-256 encryption engine in SRT offers a video-specific layer of www.mil-embedded.com

security to existing secure deployments that does not affect stream efficiency with costly overhead.

SRT uses AES [Advanced Encryption Standard] in counter mode (AES-CTR) with a short-lived key to encrypt media streams.

Note: The SRT protocol was initially developed by Haivision Systems Inc. and subsequently released as open source in April 2017. Open source SRT is distributed under Mozilla Public License 2.0. Any third party is free to use the SRT source in a larger work regardless of how that larger work is compiled.

Jack Welsh is a senior systems engineer supporting the Defense Applications Team at Haivision. Prior to joining Haivision in 2012, Jack served as engineering support to multiple U.S. Department of Defense Airborne ISR and IPSATCOM programs. Jack holds a bachelor’s in computer engineering from the University of Delaware. Readers may contact the author at jwelsh@haivision.com.

SRT encrypts the media

Haivision • www.haivision.com

stream at the transmission payload level (UDP payload of MPEG-TS/UDP encapsulation, which is about 7 MPEG-TS packets of 188 bytes each).

Why use SRT? It is very important to note that not all defense video transport infrastructure is challenged; there are many examples of well-resourced and robust architectures with capacity to spare and low rates of failure. The risk is that the insatiable appetite for video will continually add stress and complexity to our networks and that diagnosis of issues will cause lengthier outages, unnecessary equipment replacement, unwieldy email threads, more overtime, and similar problems.

SRT is a nonproprietary, API-based video stream delivery solution with strong vendor adoption and strong commercial end user adoption. More than 130 companies have endorsed the open source project by supporting the SRT Alliance, with users including such companies as Comcast, ESPN, Fox News, Microsoft, NBC Sports, and the NFL. Widely used free tools that provide the foundation for many national defense video applications – such as VideoLAN’s VLC, FFmpeg, GStreamer, and Wireshark – now support SRT. SRT presents an alternative to raw UDP that features native support for MPEG-TS, accurate signal timing, enhanced firewall traversal, and no requirement for a central server. MES www.mil-embedded.com

Z Series: Z-Axis, Interposer Compression Connectors — 20 to 175 contacts — Solderless, compression interface — SMT termination — Molded & laser-machined versions — Rectangular versions with various pin count & pin height options available — Unique shapes

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April/May 2020 39

INDUSTRY SPOTLIGHT

Ruggedizing interconnects for military and commercial UAVs

By Michael Walmsley and William Newton

Advances in electrical and electronic components and related interconnect technologies have helped launch a vast drone industry for both military and commercial use. Small drones – classified as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) – are incredibly popular and useful. According to the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), UAVs are a fast-growing segment of the entire transportation sector – with nearly 1.5 million drones and 160,000 remote drone pilots currently registered in 2019¹.

One report estimates that the drone industry will have grown to a $100 billion global market by 2020².

40 April/May 2020

Interconnect technologies for unmanned systems

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have evolved over the past number of years from hobbyist recreational uses to use in military operations and professional enterprise/commercial endeavors. Aerial remote sensing; border/perimeter patrol; delivery functions; urban and rural policing; and surveying and mapping for forestry, oil and gas, and agriculture are just some of the critical jobs drones now perform.

Military and commercial drones employ an array of electrical and electronic components in complex systems and subsystems in which reliability cannot be compromised. For example, in medical transport where medication, blood, or devices must be rapidly shipped to critical locations, the consequences of failure can be serious. In firefighting or military surveillance applications, failure can be catastrophic.

Consequently, the electrical and electronic interconnects used in recreational drones cannot be applied in commercial and military drones. Electrical wiring interconnection systems (EWIS), wiring harnesses, and connectors for batteries, controllers, motors, and flight systems must be tested and designed to withstand extreme environmental and performance demands. The emergence of these challenging environments is, in some cases, driving the development of new rugged interconnects targeted for UAVs. Robust battery interconnects Drone electric-propulsion motors, electronic speed controllers (ESC), flight controllers, global positioning system (GPS) modules, cameras, sensors, radios, and more all draw upon battery power. This reality makes the reliability of battery interconnects a critical factor in EWIS design.

MILITARY EMBEDDED SYSTEMS

www.mil-embedded.com

Rating procedures need to account for such questions as: What temperature rise is factored into the power rating? What environmental conditions did the testing account for, such as altitude rating? A lot of critical data is missing from hobby-grade connectors. pins to support a communication link between the charging system and battery pack. Smart batteries use specialized hardware and software to report information on voltage, current, and capacity, as well as temperature, impedance, and state of health. Additionally, a battery identification resistor is typically inserted inside the battery pack between an extra pin and ground to prevent a wrong battery being used in the charging system.

Finally, designers of UAVs for critical applications in the industry have indicated that a new interconnect is needed specifically for batteries operating under harsh environments where the interconnect is often exposed.

A solution for this application provides a rugged interface in a small form factor (SFF) to ensure reliable delivery of power or mixed power/signal to various UAV components. (Figure 1.)

Recreational drones generally use power connectors from varied sources – often commercial with no common standards.

Reliability test data is limited, which creates uncertainty because interconnect performance is very sensitive to solder processing and wire management. In addition, component power ratings can be misleading and need to be quantified.

Rating procedures need to account for such questions as: What temperature rise is factored into the power rating? What environmental conditions did the testing account for, such as altitude rating? A lot of critical data is missing from hobbygrade connectors.

On the other hand, military-grade legacy connectors rated for harsh environments are used for battery interconnect in military UAVs. But these interconnects are typically larger and not the best option when size and weight are critical. Designers face a dilemma between selecting interconnects that are either underbuilt or overbuilt for UAV applications.

Moreover, the introduction of smart battery technology requires additional signal www.mil-embedded.com

Figure 1 | Ruggedized connectors for UAV power delivery can bring as much as 80 amps per power contact/4 amps per signal contact in a small form factor. Image: TE Connectivity.

The design of unmanned power (UMP) connectors is based on interconnect technology already used in harsh environments. Central to the UMP design is a type of high-conductivity 80A power contacts used in military power supplies and data centers. Crimped contacts provide repeatable reliability suitable for high-volume manufacturing on 8AWG to 14AWG wires and are field terminable. Packaging for UMP products employs 2-power, 3-power, and mixed power/signal configurations to address the pin requirements for UAVs. In addition, there are cable-to-cable and cable-to-board solutions in each pin configuration, with panel-mount options.

Reliability features include: › For vibration resistance, the slim housing design incorporates contact locks and latching options to secure two connectors to ensure retention against vibration. › For high temperatures, pigtails use high-grade, flexible silicone blend wire rated at 392 °F (200 °C) and 600 V. › For reducing risk of solder-joint failure, removable crimp contacts are used to assure repeatable, reliable terminations and to facilitate easier field replacement.

Managing size and weight constraints “Beefing up” electrical and electronic interconnects to make them robust for harsh environments can also add weight and volume. High-efficiency relays and contactors can be used to handle higher voltage and amperage within a compact footprint to help meet the demanding size, weight, and power (SWaP) requirements of UAVs.

MILITARY EMBEDDED SYSTEMS

April/May 2020 41

INDUSTRY SPOTLIGHT

Interconnect technologies for unmanned systems

Robust interconnect solutions that also handle UAV SWaP challenges come in all shapes and sizes. For “micro” circular connectors based on robust MIL-DTL-38999 Series 3 standards, microcircular connectors such as the DEUTSCH Wildcat Micro connector offer a significantly reduced shell size with two housing sizes and four layouts accommodating 3, 5, or 9 contacts. ›› For small, micro-, and nano-miniature connectors: Compact rectangular, coax,and sealed circular connectors offer extreme weight and space savings.

SFF rectangular connectors are fully sealed for IP67 rating and accommodate blind mating (see Figure 2). Smaller-scale connectors, like Nanonics connectors, are designed to fit micro miniature D, subminiature, and ultra-miniature coaxial needs. ›› For compact fiber connectivity: ARINC 845-compliant EB termini (EB16) combine high performance and noncontact vibration resistance in mini sizes for single-mode and multimode fiber. Advanced transceiver modules – like new ParaByte fiber optic transceivers – feature a small thermal signature and support up to 12.5 Gb/sec transmission rates per channel. ›› For less bulky cabling: Cross-linked insulation in Raychem cabling from TE is mechanically tough, thermally stable, and much lighter compared to thick-walled soft-polymer insulation in conventional cables. ›› For space-efficient board-to-board and box-to-box connectivity: Light, nextgeneration high-speed backplane connectors that comply with the VITA 46 VPX standard are available with reliable quad-redundant contacts and support for 25+Gb/sec data speeds.

Secure, reliable UAV interconnect solutions The need for reliable, rugged interconnects is critical in military and commercial drones. The number of takeoffs and landings in UAV applications is extreme, which can significantly stress the electrical interconnect system. Moreover, high-frequency power switching may be needed to enable rapid bus transfer in the event of power loss. It’s important to understand these new extreme environments and the required reliability levels to design in the appropriate products. For UAV designers, a “followthe-wire” methodology uncovers critical factors in selecting the appropriate highpower and voltage solutions.

Today’s UAV projects benefit from the cross-discipline development of interconnect and power-management solutions from automotive, aerospace, energy, and rail sectors. Insights from industry standards groups – such as the Society of Automotive Engineers – address challenges imposed by higher power and voltage levels. Standards bodies are discussing next-generation SFF interconnects for safety-­certifiable embedded computing modules and systems packaging suitable for UAVs. Using

rugged interconnects for UAV electrical and electronic components will enable these vehicles to carry out tomorrow’s critical missions.

As the market continues to expand for small UAVs, the need for ruggedized SFF interconnect will grow. The ongoing development of cost-effective, efficient, SWaP-optimized interconnects designed for harsh environments will remove the temptation to employ commercial interconnects used in recreational drones flying over our backyards in missioncritical tasks. MES References ¹ https://www.faa.gov/news/press_releases/ news_story.cfm?newsId=24534 ² https://www.goldmansachs.com/insights/ technology-driving-innovation/drones/

Michael Walmsley, global product manager for TE Connectivity, has more than 35 years of experience with interconnects, primarily in engineering and product management roles. His areas of expertise include interconnect solutions for embedding computing, rugged high-speed board-level, and RF connectors. Michael is also associated with the VITA organization (www.vita.com), which drives technology and standards for the bus and board industry. He holds a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Rochester and an MBA from Penn State.

William Newton is product manager, aerospace, defense, and marine at TE Connectivity. He has focused his time at TE on collaborating with global counterparts to complete projects and launch multinational initiatives. He holds a BS from Elizabethtown College and an MBA from Lebanon Valley College.

Figure 2 | Fully sealed 369 series rectangular connectors handle harsh environments with a space-efficient footprint. Image: TE Connectivity.

42 April/May 2020

MILITARY EMBEDDED SYSTEMS

TE Connectivity www.te.com www.mil-embedded.com

ADVERTORIAL

EXECUTIVE SPEAKOUT

Invisible asset critical to military success and safety

By Jim Shaw, executive vice president of Engineering, Crystal Group As the Army Futures Command Task Force pursues its modernization strategy and priorities, we can see the innovative designs and unique characteristics of the new equipment vying for the Next Generation Combat Vehicles (NGCV) and Future Vertical Lift (FVL) platforms.

However, it’s what can’t be seen that will ultimately transform and determine success on the future battlefield.

While information has been the coveted advantage for military dominance, the evolving information landscape carries a much greater responsibility than ever before. Expanding the use of autonomous and optionally/partially manned platforms elevates dependencies on artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning. In turn is the need for unprecedented data networking, processing, storage and security capabilities to advance soldier and force lethality and safety.

Across all branches of the military, autonomous technology is a critical approach to minimizing the number of soldiers put into unpredictable, potentially volatile situations, while extending their reach, agility, and flexible integration for multidomain operations. This growing attention to various levels of autonomy for forward-deployed missions is driving heightened demand for solutions like Crystal Group’s rugged, scalable and secure computer hardware.

Equipped with the latest Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors, engineers and developers depend on Crystal Group computer and electronics solutions to process and transmit massive amounts of data with near-zero latency. This enables timely, accurate and secure data to be prioritized, analyzed and extracted from AI and machine learning algorithms for real-time decision making and adaptability in volatile situations when every second counts. Crystal Group’s demonstrated performance in this area includes

programs, such as Gorgon Stare, MQ-8 Fire Scout, RQ-21A Blackjack and FUSE, in addition to commercial transportation, delivery, construction and power substation applications.

Crystal Group excels in this area due to the expertise applied to creating complex system architectures needed to enable AI and autonomous operations, such as facial recognition, video analytics and geospatial modeling. As experts in optimizing HPC performance, the company continuously designs and incorporates innovative liquid, fan and fanless sealed chassis cooling techniques to ensure reliable, long-life performance.

For data to be a true asset, it must be protected. As the military continues modernizing its technology across its platforms and branches, a significant challenge is navigating increasingly complex security factors. By combining rugged hardware built and tested to meet or exceed demanding MIL specification with certified software, Crystal Group delivers maximum protection from the outside in and the inside out.

Intent on taking the uncertainty out of cybersecurity, Crystal Group works with trusted partners to design in vital end-to-end security measures from the start. Incorporating essential features, like Trusted Performance Modules (TPM 2.0), conformal-coated SAS solid state drives, NIAP-certified IPsec encryption, intrusion detection, tamper evidence and instant data destruction, secures confidential data from attempted breaches whether data is at rest, in use, or in motion. In addition, the meticulous integration of leading-edge, multi-domain data protection with critical hardware helps facilitate accreditation with ease.

Increasing autonomous technology enabled by AI is fundamentally changing military strategies, resources and operations. Incorporating Crystal Group’s demonstrated experience in effectively combining scalable innovation, reliable performance and fail-safe cybersecurity measures housed in rugged hardware continues to make these game-changing efforts to improve military dominance, lethality and warfighter safety possible.

Crystal Group, Inc. • www.crystalrugged.com

EDITOR’S CHOICE PRODUCTS Microwave power modules designed for radar, EW, and comms Each of TMD’s traveling wave tube (TWT)-based units comprises compact power supply and mini-TWT, combined into an ultracompact, lightweight, drop-in amplifier block.

The modular design is intended to simplify system design and installation, increase reliability, and minimize safety hazards. The units also promise enhanced electrical efficiency and thermal management. Performance is factory set, removing the need for any user adjustments in the field, and – if necessary – enabling field replacement of the complete unit. The product range covers S to Ka band, and includes CW, pulsed, and CW/pulsed units of compact design. At 1.7 kg with over 110 W output power, the PTXM1000 is intended to be a higher power density microwave power module (MPM).

TMD’s solid-state units use advances in 0.25 µm gallium nitride MMIC technology and low-loss power combiners, which are optimized for electronic warfare (EW) applications. TMD’s MPMs for radar, EW, and communications applications eliminate the need for external TWT connections, feature streamlined installation, can handle S- to Ka-band frequency range, are suitable for airborne applications, and are available in TWT-based and solid-state versions. ITAR-free versions are also available.

TMD Technologies Limited | www.tmd.co.uk

Communications management unit for enhanced user control Avalex’s ACM9454 is a rugged communications management unit (CMU) that serves as a single control head for managing multiple radios, TACAN [tactical air navigation], transponders, visual data such as moving maps, and more. This drop-in replacement for the ARC-210 control head is designed with data ports prepared for technology expansion with the intention to support future growth. The CMU features a high-resolution, 5-inch LCD display that is sunlight-readable and NVIS-compatible. The digital map capability works in concert with GPS, ADS-B, DAFIF, and imported data to provide position, waypoint, airport, and other key information in a zoomable, panable, scalable map-and-overlay view.

Its tested user interface is designed to transition operators from beginners to experts efficiently, while its modular software aims to enable rapid insertion of new technology and mission capabilities. Available apps include DAFIF, moving map, text messaging, and search-and-rescue beacon navigation. The wide-mode and narrow-mode options provide users with the opportunity to tailor the display to their desired format. The product also features an interface with a full range of avionics equipment, including TACANs, transponders, ADS-B receivers, navigation, and mission systems. As many as four CMUs may be interconnected in an aircraft installation. The ACM9454 is intended to be be used for enabling multirole aircraft fleets and simplifying logistics.

Avalex Technologies | www.avalex.com

Ruggedized naval video wall demonstrates latest image distribution technology The MILCOTS ruggedized naval video wall is derived from the the company’s Mobile Video Wall solutions, a solution dedicated to land forces’ Joint Operations centers or communications centers. This naval version is designed to provide the same features and meet naval specifications for use, installation, and environment, including MIL-S-901D and MIL-STD-167. The video wall enables collaborative work to be achieved while keeping each source secure. The rugged video wall is intended to bring the latest technology of image distribution and display technology while meeting stringent shock and vibration requirements. The mechanical design of the naval video wall allows user access to each display in the wall and addresses the maintainability and expected onboard support requirements, even in extreme naval operating conditions.

Key features of the video wall include a secured system, one graphic computer serving all video walls, independent scenarios on each video wall, a mechanical design intended to provide easy access to each LCD, flexible landscape and portrait modes, secure fiber-optic link between video walls, and the availability of an LCD keypad to control each video wall. The systems can handle up to 40 displays on the same server distributed in different video walls, up to 80 video captures; it also features a shock-isolation design plus a ship interface that can be customized to match existing foundations.

MILCOTS | www.milcots.com 44 April/May 2020

MILITARY EMBEDDED SYSTEMS

www.mil-embedded.com

EDITOR’S CHOICE PRODUCTS Standalone radio platform enables real-time data comms for decision-making DeepRadio from Intelligent Automation, Inc. (IAI) – a stand-alone radio platform for use in the field – uses deep neural networks on the FPGA [field-programmable gate array] for low-latency, low-power use of the RF spectrum including 5G and adaptation to spectrum dynamics, channel interference, and congestion effects in real time (able to be measured in microseconds). The platform’s FPGA-powered deep neural networks actually match the speed of dynamic (interference, channel, and traffic) changes in the spectrum, which accounts for the low latency. The product manages spectrum use by identifying interference to spectrum resources such as cellular base stations and WiFi access points, which thereby means more robust planning of spectrum coverage and optimal spectrum usage.

The radio uses an extensive spectrum database with a diverse set of waveforms and channel conditions, including path loss, fading, and multipath. The IAI radio also offers adaptive modulation, space-time block coding, precoding, and beamforming for MIMO [multiple input/multiple output] communications, which enables its use over a wide range of spectrum applications. Its spectrummanagement tools include the ability to identify interference to spectrum resources such as cellular base stations and WiFi access points, thereby allowing more robust planning of spectrum coverage and optimizing spectrum usage. Built-in security measures include identification of RF intrusions by recognizing unpermitted signals for surveillance applications.

Intelligent Automation, Inc. (IAI) | www.i-a-i.com

Beamforming ICs support radar, satellite, 5G applications The ADAR1000 X-/Ku-band beamforming IC from Analog Devices, Inc. (ADI) covers 8 GHz to 16 GHz, operating in time division duplex (TDD) mode with the transmitter and receiver integrated into one IC. The IC is intended for use primarily in X-band radar applications and Ku-band satcom, where the IC can be configured to operate in transceiver-only or receiver-only mode. The four-channel IC is housed in a 7 mm by 7 mm QFN [quad flat nolead) surface-mount package – dissipating a low 240 mW/channel in transmit mode and 160 mW/channel in receive mode – that enables easier integration into flat-panel arrays. The transceiver and receiver channels are externally designed to mate with a front-end module (FEM) available from ADI. The combined chipset enables the user to optimize and customize a suitable antenna design.

The ADAR1000 contains on-chip memory to store as many as 121 beam states, where one state contains all phase and gain settings for the entire IC. The IC can be used for analog phased array applications or hybrid array architectures that combine some digital beamforming with analog beamforming. Users can also obtain additional ADI gear – including data converters, frequency conversion, analog beamforming ICs, and a front-end module – to complete their setup.

Analog Devices, Inc. (ADI) | www.analog.com

VPX transceiver uses modular platform to ease use, increase life span At a weight of less than 2.75 kg, the TSA-219040 transceiver is a compact, ruggedized, and air-cooled system with 75 W (max) power consumption. Maker Teledyne Defense Electronics developed the transceiver on a modular platform to address industry interest in compressing while planning for long program life extensions. This broadband 6 to 18 GHz VPX card meets the increasingly demanding requirements of today’s microwave transceiver applications in an open systems-based platform.

In addition to its new phase noise and tuning performance levels, the 6U transceiver offers a high dynamic range – RF coverage of 6 to 18 GHz (1 GHz IBW) and linear dynamic range of 90 dB (1 MHz BW) – plus a noise figure of 17 dB (typical) and phase noise of 1 MHz @ -113 dBc/Hz. The part offers built-in local oscillator generation with external system reference: Its tuning speed is 5.0 µs max (to within 10 kHz) single-tone, internally generated spurious noise of -80 dBm (@ -10 dBm input and max gain), with a reference frequency input of between 10 and 100 MHz).

Teledyne Defense Electronics | www.teledynedefenseelectronics.com www.mil-embedded.com

MILITARY EMBEDDED SYSTEMS

April/May 2020 45

www.mil-embedded.com

CONNECTING WITH MIL EMBEDDED

By Editorial Staff

GIVING BACK | PODCAST | WHITE PAPER | BLOG | VIDEO | SOCIAL MEDIA | WEBCAST

GIVING BACK

Team RWB Each issue, the editorial staff of Military Embedded Systems will highlight a different charitable organization that benefits the military, veterans, and their families. We are honored to cover the technology that protects those who protect us every day. To back that up, our parent company – OpenSystems Media – will make a donation to every group we showcase on this page.

This issue we are highlighting Team RWB, a national nonprofit veterans’ service organization that works to solve the epidemic of isolation and loneliness through physical and social activity. Founder Mike Irwin, an Army combat veteran, instituted Team RWB in 2010 as a way to reach out to returning service personnel on a consistent basis in their own communities. The organization – which reports that it has 181 locations across the U.S., more than 86,000 members, and more than 1,300 veteran and civilian volunteers – strives to reach veterans by focusing on three core components: health, people, and purpose.

Team RWB aids veterans with health concerns by creating frequent opportunities for team members (known as “Eagles”) to connect through fitness, sports, and recreation to improve physical, mental, and emotional well-being. It connects people by creating authentic connections, reflected in an increased number of close relationships and improvements in teammates’ sense of belonging, purpose, and community engagement. It also aims to help members with a purposeful return to civilian life by engaging them in such experiences as leadership training and service projects that can help the members renew their self-identity and purpose in life.

The organization’s two core outreaches are the Chapter and Community Program and the Eagle Leadership Development Program, which works to develop community veteran leaders who will use their skills within their region and home chapter using evidence-based health and wellness practices to enrich members’ lives.

For more information on Team RWB, please visit https://www.teamrwb.org/.

PODCAST

WHITE PAPER

Defense avionics platforms benefit from FACE Technical Standard

Reducing Latency in Ground Vehicle Video Systems

Sponsored by Aerospace Tech Week – To be held March 24-26, 2021, in Toulouse, France

By Curtiss-Wright Defense Solutions

The Future Airborne Capability Environment (FACE) Technical Standard, created to enable reuse of software components across multiple avionics platforms, enables avionics systems designers to greatly reduce the cost of software development over the platform’s life cycle. This reuse will save hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars in the long run. Adoption of the FACE Technical Standard continues to grow – in version 3.0 currently – and the FACE Consortium, managed by The Open Group, has about 90 member companies with 20 products in the FACE registry.

Join Military Embedded Systems editorial director John McHale and Jeffry Howington of Collins Aerospace – also vice chairman of the FACE Consortium Steering Committee for nine years – as they discuss the impact of FACE on the military avionics community, the involvement of the user community, the benefits of FACE Technical Standard 3.0, and other topics.

Listen to the podcast: https://bit.ly/3atKplk

46 April/May 2020

MILITARY EMBEDDED SYSTEMS

In manned ground vehicles, delayed video images can mean personnel inside the vehicle are unaware of an approaching enemy, an impending manmade or natural obstacle, or a nearby warfighter or civilian outside the vehicle until it’s too late to appropriately or adequately respond.

Reliable, low-latency video systems in military ground vehicles improve safety and situational awareness to give warfighters an important tactical advantage in the field.

In this white paper, experts at Curtiss-Wright discuss the key to reducing end-to-end latency in a ground vehicle video system: They say that the solution is to reduce latency in each component of the video system, from the cameras to the video distribution and management units to the displays.

Read the white paper: https://bit.ly/2yjcYnf Read more white papers: http://mil-embedded.com/ white-papers/ www.mil-embedded.com

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Pentek, Inc., One Park Way, Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458 Phone: 201-818-5900 • Fax: 201-818-5904 • email: info@pentek.com • www.pentek.com Worldwide Distribution & Support, Copyright © 2019 Pentek, Inc. Pentek, Quartz, QuartzXM and Navigator are trademarks of Pentek, Inc. Other trademarks are properties of their respective owners.