Military Embedded Systems January/February 2024

@military_cots

John McHale

6

SOF Week and MOSA news

University Update

7

Fostering partnerships on campus

Mil Tech Trends

MBSE and ML for missile safety systems

Industry Spotlight

28

Powering RF & microwave arrays www.MilitaryEmbedded.com

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Jan/Feb 2024 | Volume 20 | Number 1

UKRAINE PROVIDES KEY LESSONS FOR MISSILE DEFENSE RADAR ON THE BATTLEFIELD P 16

RADAR/EW ISSUE COPY TO COME

P 12 Metamaterials for military radar, invisibility cloaks, and more

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TABLE OF CONTENTS 20

January/February 2024 Volume 20 | Number 1

38

COLUMNS

Editor’s Perspective 6 SOF Week Show Daily and MOSA news

By John McHale

University Update 7 Auburn University fosters military, industry parnerships

By Lisa Daigle

THE LATEST

FEATURES

Defense Tech Wire 8 By Dan Taylor

EXECUTIVE INTERVIEW

Editor’s Choice Products 42 By Military Embedded Systems Staff Guest Blog 44 Bringing data processing to the extraterrestrial edge

By Travis Steele, Red Hat

Connecting with Military Embedded 46 By Military Embedded Systems Staff 16

12 Metamaterials for military radar, invisibility cloaks, and more Q&A with Tom Driscoll, Co-founder and CTO of Echodyne

By John McHale, Group Editorial Director

SPECIAL REPORT: Radar for missile/hypersonic defense 16 U kraine provides key lessons for missile defense radar on the battlefield

By Dan Taylor, Technology Editor MIL TECH TRENDS:

Leveraging the Sensor Open Systems Architecture (SOSA) for radar applications 20 Applying MBSE and ML to missile safety subsystems

By Brian Hetsko, CAES

INDUSTRY SPOTLIGHT: RF and microwave designs for electronic warfare 24 Talking electronic warfare trends, requirements, AOC Q&A with Jerome Patoux, Director of Aerospace & Defense for the Aerospace, Defense, and RF Products Business Unit of Analog Devices

By John McHale, Group Editorial Director

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28 Robust power for RF/µW hybrid and digital phased arrays

By Sean D’Arcy, Michelle Lozada, Eric Faraci, and Wibawa Chou, Infineon 32 Cores and threads: Hybrid processors for today’s multitasking world

By Aaron Frank, Curtiss-Wright Defense Solutions 38 Countering unpredictable future threats demands MOSA

By Jeff Woods and Tammy Yost, W. L. Gore

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4 January/February 2024

ON THE COVER: The Lower Tier Air and Missile Defense Sensor (LTAMDS) – the first in Raytheon's "GhostEye" family of radars – is being developed for the U.S. Army’s LTAMDS program.

It is a medium-range radar designed to defeat advanced and next-generation threats, including hypersonic weapons, or those that fly faster than a mile a second.

The primary array is about the same size as the array for the Patriot Air and Missile Defense System, but it has more than twice the power. It is also intended to preserve existing military customers' investment in the Patriot system.

(Image courtesy Raytheon.) https://www.linkedin.com/groups/1864255/

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GROUP EDITORIAL DIRECTOR John McHale john.mchale@opensysmedia.com ASSISTANT MANAGING EDITOR Lisa Daigle lisa.daigle@opensysmedia.com TECHNOLOGY EDITOR – WASHINGTON BUREAU Dan Taylor dan.taylor@opensysmedia.com CREATIVE DIRECTOR Stephanie Sweet stephanie.sweet@opensysmedia.com WEB DEVELOPER Paul Nelson paul.nelson@opensysmedia.com EMAIL MARKETING SPECIALIST Drew Kaufman drew.kaufman@opensysmedia.com WEBCAST MANAGER Marvin Augustyn marvin.augustyn@opensysmedia.com VITA EDITORIAL DIRECTOR Jerry Gipper jerry.gipper@opensysmedia.com

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31 Elma Electronic – Leaders in modular open standards enabling the modern warfighter 48 GMS – X9 Spider. The world's most powerful full-featured wearable AI computer.

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Satellite 2024 Conference & Exhibition March 18-21, 2024 Washington, DC https://www.satshow.com/ embedded world Exhibition & Conference April 9-11, 2024 Nuremburg, Germany https://www.embedded-world.de/en Sea-Air-Space April 8-10, 2024 National Harbor, MD https://seaairspace.org/ SOF Week 2024 May 6-10, 2024 Tampa, FL https://www.sofweek.org/

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January/February 2024

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EDITOR’S PERSPECTIVE

SOF Week Show Daily and MOSA news

By John McHale, Editorial Director

John.McHale@opensysmedia.com

Once again, Military Embedded Systems is partnering with Shephard Media in the United Kingdom to produce the SOF Week 2024 Show Daily and Show Guide, as we were named the official Media and Show Daily Partners for SOF Week 2024.

The newsletters will reach not only all of the show attendees but also the additional combined SOF-related audiences of Military Embedded Systems and Shephard.

The event – to be held in Tampa, Florida, the week of May 6, 2024 – is jointly sponsored by U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) and the Global SOF Foundation and is expected to draw more than 15,000 attendees.

Our most read story from the event last year was “USSOCOM commander warns of ‘decade of consequence’ ahead,” Technology Editor Dan Taylor’s coverage of the USSOCOM Commander Gen. Bryan Fenton’s keynote address.

Last year, our SOF Week Show Daily team posted 80 pieces of content over four days consisting of videos, news, and blogs on the technology showcased at the event; news from the show; conference presentations from USSOCOM and industry leaders; and in-depth interviews with USSOCOM leaders. To view our coverage from last year, visit www.militaryembedded.com/ SOFWEEK.

Among the more popular topics discussed at the 2023 event were USSOCOM’s approach to acquisition and the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) modular open system approach (MOSA) mandate. Prior to the event, Jim Smith, then-Acquisition Executive for USSOCOM, told our SOF Week Show Daily team about USSOCOM creating a new Program Executive Office for SOF Digital Applications as part of an effort to accelerate the software-acquisition process: “We now have six-plus programs that are in continuous development/continuous deployment pipeline for software acquisition. We’ve completely changed the culture on how we’re doing that, and what’s made that hum is our absolute adherence to MOSA.”

According to SOF Week, the 2024 event will feature: › An expanded exhibition hall, organized by USSOCOM Program Executive Office (PEO) areas › Extensive programming to include senior keynote speakers, professional development seminars, industry engagements, business matchmaking, and nonprofit interests › Live capabilities demonstrations › USSOCOM Annual Awards Ceremony and Dinner › “SOF Week Campus” in downtown Tampa The live capabilities demonstrations are quite fun to watch: In the past, USSOCOM personnel have performed HALO [high altitude, low opening] jumps, simulated hostage rescues, and one year showcased the Little Bird helicopter in action. If you make it to this year’s event, be sure to catch a live demo.

Remember, USSOCOM operators typically perform those duties at night.

To learn how you can participate editorially in the Official SOF Week Show Daily newsletter – one deploys in the morning and one in the evening each day to all show attendees – email me at john.mchale@opensysmedia.com.

If you are an exhibitor and want to learn about sponsorship opportunities in the Official SOF Week Daily, Official SOF Week Show Guide, and SOF Week TV channel, contact my colleague Patrick Hopper at patrick.hopper@opensysmedia.com.

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MILITARY EMBEDDED SYSTEMS

Our coverage will also be featured on www.militaryembedded. com and on www.shephardmedia.com. Both sites will feature updates on the opportunities mentioned above, or you can visit the show site at www.sofweek.org.

Speaking of MOSA, Military Embedded Systems has its third annual MOSA Virtual Summit coming up in late February. Jason Dirner, MOSA Chief Engineer, MOSA Management Office, Engineering & Systems Integration (ESI) Directorate, U.S. Army DEVCOM C5ISR Center, will keynote the MOSA Virtual Summit, to be held February 27 at 11 a.m. EST. Other sessions will include “Leveraging MOSA for C5ISR, Electronic Warfare, and Radar Applications,” “MOSA at the Edge – C5ISR Sensors Across Multiple Domains,” and “MOSA Strategies for Military Aviation Platforms.”

For even more on MOSA, see our coverage in this special Radar/ EW guide, on design trends in radar and electronic warfare.

Lastly, just a reminder: We will also be producing our fourth annual SOSA Special Edition in the spring (mailed with our April/May issue of Military Embedded Systems), highlighting editorial content on The Open Group’s Sensor Open Systems Architecture (SOSA) Technical Standard from the pages and website of Military Embedded Systems magazine, as well as the products aligned and conformant to the Technical Standard.

We have lots going on – don’t miss any of it. www.militaryembedded.com

UNIVERSITY UPDATE

Auburn University fosters military, industry parnerships

By Lisa Daigle, Assistant Managing Editor Auburn University, one of Alabama’s two flagship universities, is well-known for sports – but its engineering departments are notching their own wins in the military-technology arena as they help to bolster the country’s national security while giving students a view into the defense industry.

One recent milestone reported by the university was a demonstration in late 2023 that showcased a new way to safely meet the extreme demands of pulse-power electrical systems, tailored for next-generation defense missions. During the December demo, observers witnessed emulated pulse-power mission load discharges powered by a cutting-edge, 1,000-volt lithium-ion battery pack.

A research team from Auburn University and partner company IntraMicron Inc. – a company founded in 2001 to commercialize materials developed at Auburn University – has been working on a battery project to manage huge thermal loads, such as those used or discharged during the use of directed-energy weapons.

“Our technology provides a safe and effective means to remove that heat, which prevents one battery from getting so hot that it might blow up and then cause all the other 275 batteries in the pack to ignite as well,” says Bruce Tatarchuk, IntraMicron cofounder and CEO who serves as director of Auburn University’s Center for Microfibrous Materials Manufacturing and the Charles Gavin III Endowed Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering.

Thermal energy storage is used during defense missions to provide a high-density cooling capability for directed-energy or other battle systems. The university reports that advanced thermal-management techniques enable as much as a four-fold increase in power density, setting the stage for next-generation pulse power requirements.

“From a research standpoint, we at Auburn University focus heavily on societal impact and improving the quality of life, driving our economy, and securing our nation,” states Steve Taylor, vice president for research and economic development at Auburn University. “There’s a significant amount of nationalsecurity work that Auburn does across engineering, science, math, and veterinary medicine. IntraMicron is a part of that overall effort in manufacturing, helping to make sure that we have the appropriate industrial base in this country to defend our economy. Making strategic investments in research faculty, making investments in our campus research infrastructure, and making investments in research programs can produce technology we need to defend ourselves. And, in this case, continue to drive our economy forward and keep America safe.” www.militaryembedded.com

Auburn co-op students, graduate students, and former co-op students-turned-staff engineers work side-by-side at IntraMicron, Tatarchuk observes. “The military is concerned about workforce development and the strategic supply and access to people versed in technology. The fact that we can align the student educational experience with the critical workforce needs of the future is a big deal.

“Here, we’ve got a university and a small spinoff business working together. We’re not just talking about it. We’re really doing it. We are demonstrating that it’s not just technology and the group of people collaborating. It’s the overarching platform and the model we’re addressing. Who will this impact?

Research targets that have societal benefit … this one being national defense,” he adds.

Another of Auburn University’s defense-related projects is a new three-year venture – the recipient of a $50 million grant, the single largest prime research contract ever awarded to Auburn University – designed to help the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Aviation & Missile Center increase the pace of its ongoing efforts to modernize and streamline. The program will be facilitated through the Auburn University Applied Research Institute (AUARI) in Huntsville and run by research personnel from Auburn’s National Center for Additive Manufacturing Excellence (NCAME) and the Interdisciplinary Center for Advanced Manufacturing Systems (ICAMS).

Robert Dowling, AUARI director of research development, says of the Auburn/Army effort: “Our main objective is to enable the Army to incorporate advanced manufacturing materials and methods into existing and future aviation and missile systems.

To do that, we’ll develop prototype advanced manufacturing processes required to analyze, design, develop, test, integrate, and sustain qualified components for existing and future aviation and missile systems.”

Dowling calls the project tailor-made for fulfilling one of the AUARI administration’s stated goals: furthering connections between Auburn University’s main campus and members of Huntsville’s defense sector. “With this award, we’ve demonstrated the significant opportunities that can be created for faculty and students when we combine our core research expertise with customer proximity and knowledge,” Dowling says. “AUARI’s proximity to Redstone Arsenal and familiarity with Army customers and missions enabled the AUARI team to develop a highly responsive proposal representing a broad spectrum of Auburn’s research capabilities both on-campus and in Huntsville.”

MILITARY EMBEDDED SYSTEMS

January/February 2024

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

By Dan Taylor, Technology Editor

Raytheon will supply IR sensors for U.S. Army Bradley Fighting Vehicles Raytheon won a $154 million contract to supply the U.S. Army with Commander’s Independent Viewer (CIV) systems, which are aimed at upgrading the Bradley Fighting Vehicles as part of an initiative to enhance the Army’s armored combat vehicles with advanced technology, the company announced in a statement. The CIV system uses electro-optical/infrared sight technology and forward-looking infrared (FLIR) cameras and sensors. This upgrade is designed to provide 360-degree battlefield oversight and better target acquisition capabilities to the Bradley Fighting Vehicles, according to Raytheon’s statement.

The company says the integration of the CIV systems into the Bradley Fighting Vehicles will improve situational awareness and threat detection with advancements like all-weather performance and a comprehensive battlefield view to enhance the vehicle commander's ability to locate, identify, and engage both stationary and moving targets under various conditions.

Figure 1 | Image courtesy Raytheon.

Large uncrewed ground vehicle will go to UAE Milrem Robotics won a contract to provide the United Arab Emirates (UAE) defense ministry with 20 tracked robotic combat vehicles (RCVs) and 40 THeMIS uncrewed ground vehicles (UGVs), the company announced. This agreement involves an experimentation and trial program to integrate uncrewed ground capabilities into the UAE armed forces.

Milrem says these efforts aim to enhance combat capabilities through the deployment of THeMIS UGVs and tracked RCVs, both featuring autonomy, third-party payloads, and communication capabilities. Milrem Robotics will provide the UAE armed forces with tracked RCVs armed with 30 mm MK44 cannons, THeMIS combat units equipped with 30 mm M230LF remote weapon stations and indirect fire systems, as well as THeMIS Observe units featuring radar and camera systems with shot detection capabilities.

Star Lab releases capability to secure KVM hypervisors with Titanium for KVM Mission-critical software protection company Star Lab released Titanium for KVM, a security solution for kernel-based virtual machines (KVM). The culmination of a multiyear effort, this solution extends Star Lab’s Titanium Technology Protection capabilities to support the KVM host, an open-source virtualization technology that turns Linux into a hypervisor.

Developed in response to the growing use of virtualization in U.S. defense and industrial systems, including increasing adoption of KVM in Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) systems, Titanium for KVM extends Titanium Technology Protection capabilities to provide safety and security for this component in the system stack. Star Lab’s solution includes secure boot, data-at-rest protections, mandatory access controls, kernel hardening, and updated security for KVM-based virtualization.

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MILITARY EMBEDDED SYSTEMS

Figure 2 | Image courtesy Star Lab.

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Figure 3 | Image courtesy Saab.

Saab to support UAE surveillance system Saab won a contract with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) defense ministry for in-service support for the GlobalEye Air­ borne Early Warning and Control (AEW&C) system, the company announced. The three-year, $190 million contract lasts until 2026 and includes maintenance, logistics support, and training services. GlobalEye – a multidomain AEW&C platform – is equipped with a combination of active and passive sensors and is used in the long-range detection and identification of aerial, maritime, and terrestrial objects, according to Saab.

The system is intended to improve the situational awareness for air, land, and seaborne forces by providing real-time intelligence, thus facilitating early threat detection. It is mounted on a Bombardier Global 6000/6500 long-range business jet.

AI to be integrated into drone under development for U.S. Army Red Cat will integrate artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities into a U.S. Army drone being developed for the service's Short Range Reconnaissance (SRR) Tranche 2 program, the company announced. Red Cat will integrate Teledyne FLIR’s Prism AI platform onto a drone developed by Teal Drones – a Red Cat subsidiary – to enhance tactical edge capabilities, battlefield management, and decision-making support. The company says that the AI platform is designed for classification, object detection, and autonomous tracking for both day and night operations.

Red Cat officials said that Teal was selected by the Department of Defense’s Defense Innovation Unit and the U.S. Army as one of two finalists competing in the SRR program; the program’s goal, the officials asserted, is to provide small, rucksack-portable drone capabilities to Army platoons for situational awareness beyond the next terrain feature.

Market for SATCOM equipment to see CAGR of 11.3% to 2028, study predicts The satellite communication (SATCOM) equipment market, which stood at $22.6 billion in 2023, is projected to rise to $38.7 billion by 2028, at a combined annual growth rate (CAGR) of 11.3%, according to a study from MarketsandMarkets, “Satellite Com­ munication (SATCOM) Equipment Market Size, Share, Industry Growth & Analysis, 2028.”

According to the study authors, factors that will drive the market for satellite equipment over the next several years include increasing frequency of launches of low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites; the proliferation of satellite constellations for communication applications; the development of smaller, efficient satellites; and the growing utilization of software-defined networking (SDN) and virtualization technologies. Aspects that could potentially suppress growth, the study authors assert, include government regulations and policies that may pose restrictions on SATCOM system deployment in certain regions, which might include limitations on frequency band usage and the need for specific licenses.

UK Army land vehicles will get C-UAS, other protection from Qinetiq Qinetiq won a contract from the U.K. Defence Science and Technology Laboratory to better protect the British Armyʼs land armored vehicles from using drones and other weapons, a company announcement said. This program, managed through the Aurora Engineering Delivery Partnership (EDP), designates Leonardo UK as the principal systems integrator, leading a team that includes Thales, CGI, Roke, Ultra Electronics, and Frazer Nash. Qinetiq is the lead EDP partner.

The project aims to build upon the Icarus TDP, a prior initiative led by Leonardo, which concluded in July 2021. This new phase signifies a continuation of the U.K. Modular Integrated Protection System (MIPS) program, focusing on developing an integrated protection system architecture for various British Army vehicles, including tanks and armored personnel carriers, to counter a range of threats. www.militaryembedded.com

Figure 4 | Image courtesy Qinetiq.

MILITARY EMBEDDED SYSTEMS

January/February 2024

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DEFENSE TECH WIRE Continued

Satellites supporting DARPA Blackjack program complete milestones Satellites supporting the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Blackjack program recently completed some important milestones, according to an RTX announcement. The satellites are produced by Blue Canyon Technologies (BCT), a subsidiary of RTX. The Blackjack program uses BCT’s Saturn-class bus platform to deploy costeffective reconnaissance satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO), the statement reads.

Traditionally, U.S. national security space assets have been stationed in geosynchronous orbit, providing extensive Figure 5 | Image courtesy RTX. coverage, but the DARPA Blackjack program is exploring the feasibility of a network of four interconnected satellites in LEO as a potential alternative – with the aim of maintaining the effectiveness of current systems while operating closer to Earth, the statement adds.

Airbus Helicopters to buy tactical drone manufacturer Aerovel Airbus Helicopters plans to acquire Aerovel and its uncrewed aerial system (UAS), Flexrotor, as part of a bid to enhance its tactical UAS offerings, the company announced in a statement. The company expects the acquisition, subject to regulatory approvals and customary conditions, to close sometime during 2024.

Flexrotor is a small tactical UAS designed primarily for ISTAR missions, both at sea and over land, with a focus on expeditionary missions that require minimal operational footprint, the statement reads.

AI-powered software demos autonomy for uncrewed combat vehicle General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc. (GA-ASI) and several team members demonstrated a hardware-agnostic, open standards-based autonomy ecosystem for uncrewed combat air vehicles (UCAVs) on a GA-ASI MQ-20 Avenger as part of a battery of live flight tests during November 2023. AI/ML software provider SSCI reported successful flight tests of its collaborative mission autonomy (CMA) software during the trials.

Also tested were three software-defined radios (SDRs) from L3Harris Technologies to support line-of-sight (LOS), command and control, and data movement capabilities via Waveform X, a nonproprietary U.S. government-owned communications capability. During the flight tests – conducted at GA-ASI’s flight operations facility in El Mirage, California – CMA software controlled a mixed team of live, virtual, and constructive (LVC) MQ-20 uncrewed aerial systems (UASs) to execute a fully autonomous multivehicle defensive counter air mission.

Flexrotor has Vertical Takeoff and Landing (VTOL) features, and can be autonomously launched and recovered in confined spaces, such as a 12 by 12 ft. area, the company says. It is equipped to carry various payloads, including electro-optical systems and advanced sensors, and has a maximum launch weight of 25 kg.

U.S. Army to test wireless comms system for M88 armored vehicles Wireless communications provider Axnes Inc. will collaborate with the U.S. Army Program Executive Office, Ground Combat Systems (PEO GCS) to field-test and evaluate the Axnes PNG Wireless Intercom System (WICS) on the M88 armored recovery vehicle. Under the terms of the agreement with the Army, Axnes will equip 105 M88 recovery vehicles with the PNG WICS to enhance the safety and situational awareness of mounted and dismounted personnel during critical recovery missions.

The PNG operates using an intuitive interface and real-time full-duplex voice communications, with the users’ handsfree to perform other tasks. For these tests, three brigades operating 105 M88 vehicles will field-test the PNG WICS.

10 January/February 2024

Figure 6 | M88 image: U.S. Army National Guard/Capt. Bryant Wine.

MILITARY EMBEDDED SYSTEMS

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U.S. Air Force orders AI algorithms from GSI Technology Semiconductor memory company GSI Technology was tapped by AFWERX (the innovation arm of the Department of the U.S. Air Force and a directorate within the Air Force Research Laboratory) for a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Direct-to-Phase II contract totaling $1.1 million to demonstrate high-data computation/artificial intelligence (AI) use cases leveraging the in-memory architecture of its next-­ generation Associative Processing Unit-2 (APU2)

Figure 7 | Image: Pete Linforth/Pixabay.

GSI officials say that they will use the funds to develop an AI chip that will be used to address various challenges faced by the Air Force, such as in-aircraft search and rescue, object detection, moving target indication, change detection, and image navigation in GPS-denied situations. GSI will also develop algorithms using data from the United States Space Force (USSF) to highlight the performance benefits of its compute-in-memory APU2 integrated circuit (IC).

New air defense system tested in Israel The Israeli Ministry of Defense, in collaboration with Rafael, conducted a test for the SPYDER air defense system in its latest configuration, All in One, Rafael announced in a statement. The recent test was focused on intercepting an uncrewed aerial vehicle (UAV) in a complex operational scenario, the company says.

Several military forces use the SPYDER system for air defense against a range of airborne threats, including missiles, UAVs, aircraft, helicopters, and tactical ballistic missiles (TBMs). The company says that the new All in One configuration is designed to integrate a radar, electro-optical launcher, control and command system, and PYTHON and Derby interceptors on a single platform. This setup is intended to offer optimal air defense for point or area defense, functioning either as part of a SPYDER battery or independently with minimal operator input, the statement adds.

Network-enabled weapon garners Raytheon $345 million USAF contract The Lithuanian Defence Material Agency (DMA) has reached an agreement with Dutch procurement Agency COMMIT to buy Thales Ground Master 200 Multi-Mission Compact radars (GM200 MM/C), a move aimed at bolstering the capabilities of the Lithuanian Land Forces, according to a Thales statement.

The company’s announcement says that the GM200 MM/C radar is designed to provide advanced detection, tracking, and classification of a wide range of threats, including drones, missiles, and aircraft, with capability extending to weapon location and air defense. Equipped with 4D AESA [active electronically scanned array] technology, Thales says that the GM200 MM/C is intended to give radar operators extended time-on-target so they can gather information on incoming threats such as drones as well as rockets, artillery, and mortar attacks.

Network-enabled weapon garners Raytheon $345 million USAF contract Raytheon (an RTX business) won a $345 million contract with the U.S. Air Force (USAF) to produce and deliver more than 1,500 StormBreaker smart weapons, which are air-to-surface, network-enabled weapons that can engage moving targets in all weather conditions using a multi-effects warhead and tri-mode seeker.

The company describes StormBreaker as a weapon that is equipped with a multimode seeker intended to guide the weapon by imaging infrared, millimeter wave radar, and semiactive laser that can be used with GPS and inertial navigation system guidance.

According to Raytheon information, StormBreaker is designed to be small – thereby enabling fewer aircraft to handle the same number of targets compared to larger weapons that may require multiple jets – and is designed to fly more than 40 miles to strike mobile targets, aiming to reduce the amount of time that aircrews spend in combat. www.militaryembedded.com

Figure 8 | Raytheon image.

MILITARY EMBEDDED SYSTEMS

January/February 2024

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EXECUTIVE INTERVIEW

Metamaterials for military radar, invisibility cloaks, and more

By John McHale, Editorial Director

Tom Driscoll

Co-founder and CTO of Echodyne

Engineers at Echodyne have enhanced the capability of small radars for military applications such a counter-UAS [uncrewed aircraft system]. In a podcast I did with Tom Driscoll, co-founder and CTO of Echodyne, he and I discussed how his team’s metamaterials electronically scanned array (MESA) radar system does things that traditional active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar systems cannot, the company’s unique business model, and how it leverages commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) components like Xilinx FPGAs [field-programmable gate arrays]. Tom also shared details about his background in metamaterials and how he once designed an RF invisibility cloak using them. Edited excerpts follow.

MCHALE: Can you please give us a brief description of your responsibility within Echodyne?

DRISCOLL: I’m one of the two co-founders of Echodyne and I’ve served as a CTO since our foundation in 2014. I was also the managing director of the technology incubator we came out of and as such was one of the handful of people that invented our core technology. I’ve worn a number of hats over the eight years of growth and development of Echodyne. I started off pretty much changing light bulbs and picking furniture like everybody does in a startup company. I’ve been chief architect of almost all of our products and [ran all of engineering] until we divided research and engineering. Today, I still run all of our research and development team, looking at what’s next in some advanced capabilities.

MCHALE: Many people I talk to in industry – from primes to COTS suppliers – have told me to go check out your company and what you guys are doing. Echodyne CEO and co-founder Evan Frankenberg told me at DSEI in London last fall that

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Echodyne’s radar product came about while you were looking at an alternative to expensive AESA radars and landed on using metamaterials to design your MESA radar. I also saw that you were a visiting scientist at the Duke University Center of Metamaterials and Integrated Photonics. What is it about metamaterials that makes for effective radar systems? How did Echodyne come up with the MESA radar?

DRISCOLL: I probably can’t say this for certain, but I think it might be true, that I’m probably the first person in the world to get a Ph.D. in this new physics field of metamaterials. And that was just serendipity. I started my Ph.D. at UC San Diego and looked at what all the research groups are doing. And I really liked this group with a professor named David Smith that was talking about electromagnetic metamaterials, and new ways to manipulate light and radio waves and microwaves. That’s really where I jumped in. Following my graduation from UCSD, I got courted to come out to Duke University and help do research there. Duke had really made a name for itself as the center of the academic metamaterials world. We did some fun stuff out there. www.militaryembedded.com

I wasn’t an author on this paper, but I think one of the most famous experiments [was] an invisibility cloak. Now, it’s an invisibility cloak for microwaves, but [it] might be good for stealth fighters or something like that. It certainly got a lot of attention.

And then after Duke, I got courted to come out to Seattle.

There was a company here that was trying to make a name for itself as the center of the industrial and commercialization metamaterials world. That’s where we got this tech incubator started. I’ve been in metamaterials for probably going on close to 20 years now [and] we’ve identified a lot of cool things we can do with it.

When I came out to Seattle, the charter was to move away from academic interests and figure out how we could make money with metamaterials, either licensing it or through startups.

We pretty quickly identified antennas as this really rich area for innovation. Antennas are in everything. It might not sound amazing, but if you can make an antenna and a cellphone just a couple percent better, that’s worth a lot of money because there’s so many cellphones. So, we explored a number of different antenna-related areas. I really became enamored with radar and radar antennas. It’s this rich, deep technical field that you can learn in for your entire life and still not know at all.

We asked the question, could we use metamaterials to improve radar? And the answer was, yes, we could use metamaterials to create an antenna that electrically steers a beam in the same way as that phased-array active ESA does for what we thought was orders of magnitude reduction in the cost, size, weight, and power (SWaP) of the net system. We’ve been maturing and improving [the technology] for the eight years since.

MCHALE: Regarding RF invisibility cloaks, you mentioned fighter jets as an application for them. How would that work?

Would the metamaterials deflect the signals used to detect the fighter, effectively making it invisible? Am I oversimplifying?

DRISCOLL: Well, we never did it for a fighter. To the best of my knowledge, no one’s done it for a fighter, I think there’s still a significant technical and engineering gap that needs to be closed before anybody could. But if somebody had done it for a fighter, I probably wouldn’t know about it.

The difference between true invisibility and stealth is kind of subtle. If something is invisible, it has to work from all angles, you have to be able to turn it around in 360 degrees in both directions. And it has to still be invisible. That’s different than camouflage, because I could paint the background on one side of an object and it would look like it blends in. But when I turned it, I would see that in the turn off it was only painted on one side. It’s different than stealth because stealth works most of the time by trying to absorb the energy and avoid reflecting it back so that you don’t reflect an energy back, then it’s difficult to detect you. Invisibility catches the energy, bends it around the object, like water flowing around the rock in a river, and then sends it out the other side completely unperturbed. You never even knew it was there. There was never a ripple.

MCHALE: So, it’s kind of like in science fiction, when spaceships cloak, they are bending the light, so to speak? www.militaryembedded.com

DRISCOLL: That’s exactly right. That’s what we’re doing with these nanomaterial devices, is we’re bending light. Light sometimes at the wavelength of optical light, but more often at the wavelength of microwaves and radio waves. That’s because they have longer wavelengths. It’s easier to manipulate structures at those longer wavelengths.

MCHALE: Are there tradeoffs between the MESA and AESA solutions?

DRISCOLL: There are absolutely tradeoffs. Engineering is just the art of tradeoffs. And most of the time an invention in engineering is just another tool in the toolbox. And sometimes it’s the right tool, and sometimes it’s not.

The output, the beam that’s formed by our metamaterials ESA, and a traditional phased-array, or AESA are very similar to each other. It’s the way in which we form that beam that’s different.

In a traditional phased array, you have these elements called phase shifters, hence the name. And you need to base those phase shifters at one-half of the wavelength away from each other. You do that typically in some second grid, and that forms an array. At every one of those sites in that array, the phase shifter picks the right phase, you adjust via some voltage or some digital signal. Then collectively, all the sites in that array form a narrow beam in a specific direction. That’s how you electronically scan the array.

In the metamaterials approach, we actually have a much denser array, instead of spacing them at half of a wavelength, we spaced them at about a tenth of a wavelength, so they’re five times denser. Then instead of having any phase shifters, what we do is we just turn each cell on or off. That binary collection of ons and offs creates what’s technically called a diffraction grating or an optical hologram. It’s an RF optical hologram, but it’s still a hologram. The beam that comes out is still pretty much the same as the beam that comes out of that phased array. But we don’t need these phase shifters. It’s simple in the way a CD is simple, digitally, compared to an analog tape recorder.

MCHALE: So your secret sauce, that nobody else has come up with, is how you turn those things on and off?

DRISCOLL: That’s right. It’s the way in which you design that dense array. It’s the map that helps you understand which of them you turn on and off. And then a different pattern of ons and offs steers a beam in a different direction. So, by changing that pattern of ons and offs, that’s how I electronically steer my radar beam around a wide field of view or field of regard.

MCHALE: How long has Echodyne been in business?

DRISCOLL: We started the company in December of 2014. A true statement about the radar market is that it’s incredibly fragmented. The radar for a car that keeps you from running into somebody is wildly different from the radar that’s on a fighter jet. And that’s wildly different from the radar you would put on a fishing boat. There are all these submarket verticals and when we started the company, we said, we’re not actually sure at the outset which of these markets we’re gonna go

MILITARY EMBEDDED SYSTEMS

January/February 2024

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EXECUTIVE INTERVIEW tackle. We spent a little [time] just doing R&D, improving our key performances, and then also doing market assessments.

We released the evaluation kit after about 18 months of business and shipped that evaluation kit to a bunch of people in all of these different submarket verticals. We let them play with it. That gained us some credit, some reputation that yes, in fact, this technique worked. It also allowed us to start good business-development conversations and figure out what their needs were and how many could we sell to that need.

The first markets we identified to productize on were drones, and this was launched as a dual product. It was launched as a product for drones that are in the air to enable them to use one of our radars to fly safely. This is what’s called a collisionavoidance radar. It scans the airspace for that airborne drone.

It tells you if there’s a Cessna or some other small drone that you might run into and alert to so you cannot run into it simultaneously. We sold this in a ground-based version that could be used to protect against drones – whether it’s a just careless usage, like somebody’s flying for fun near an airport, or a nefarious usage, like somebody’s flying drugs into a prison using a drone. That was our first product. We launched that in 2017.

MCHALE: By dual use do you mean in terms of import-export controls? Or do you have a different meaning?

DRISCOLL: I actually mean both of them: I only said one, but both of them are true. I meant dual use in that we call this airborne product EchoFlight for drones that are flying in the air.

Then we’ve got this ground-based product we call EchoGuard that’s for a different set of customers to protect against drones from the ground. But it is true that Echodyne builds dual-use products in the defense commercial sense. We build and ship commercial products, but one of our largest customers tends to be the military and the DoD [Department of Defense].

MCHALE: When I was speaking with [Echodyne co-founder] Evan at DSEI, he referenced that your radar was on a counterUAS system on display at Anduril’s booth. Are counter-drone solutions a typical defense application Echodyne?

DRISCOLL: We do a lot of counter-drone, counter-UAS. I would say it is our single-largest market vertical.

MCHALE: He also told me that your radar is a COTS radar, available off the shelf. Do you use a lot of COTS components as well such as single-board computers, FPGAs, etc.?

DRISCOLL: Almost everything in our radars is COTS electronics. And we in turn become COTS because [the radar is available off the shelf] and shipped within a week of the purchase order. The only thing that’s not COTS is the design of our metamaterial antennas. Obviously, there’s some custom sauce there. But the materials it’s built out of are standard such as circuit-board materials and then we put down Infineon and SkyWorks parts on top of those circuit-board materials.

14 January/February 2024

MILITARY EMBEDDED SYSTEMS

So, there’s no material science in metamaterials. Maybe it’s not the best word we could have named this as a field. Everybody always thinks that it’s in a cleanroom doing thin films, but it’s just a circuit board to us.

We do love the Xilinx [SoCs, systems on chip], which we build into SoMs [systems on module]. We buy those with the Ultra Scale Plus Zynq chips on it from a supplier. They sell that SoM to us as COTS because there’s a deep art to the design of highspeed digital stuff. We can save a little bit of time, money, and effort by just buying that from an external vendor.

Our circuit cards, the baseband, power-processing circuit cards are full of conventional parts that you’d get from Digikey. Our RF circuit cards are pretty much the same as well, just from a different set of vendors.

There are absolutely tradeoffs. Engineering is just the art of tradeoffs. And most of the time an invention in engineering is just another tool in the toolbox. And sometimes it’s the right tool, and sometimes it’s not.

MCHALE: A popular topic in our industry is AI [artificial intelligence]. Sometimes I think AI is just a marketing ploy, but in many design processes it’s not. Do you use AI or ML [machine learning] in your design process at all?

DRISCOLL: Well, for a long time, I kind of stood by a saying that AI was just the latest impressive thing that any computer can do. There was a point in time where I think people were saying that spellcheck was AI, even though it’s quite algorithmic. But I may have to back away from that snarky saying because I do think that the new transformer attention-based nets are something kind of interestingly new. It’s a definite generational leap forward. It’s not just the latest thing computers can do, it’s something new.

We don’t use any AI in our design process. It’s an interesting question if we could, but we don’t. And we do use less AI and more ML in some of our signal processing. But no neural net black boxes today. We are doing some interesting new research looking at using transformers and attention nets for some parts for signal processing. But it’s research, so I won’t say very much about that.

MCHALE: We cover the modular open systems approach (MOSA) mandate and the Sensor Open Systems Architecture (SOSA) Technical Standard quite a bit. Echodyne is a member of the SOSA Consortium. Are you seeing more requirements related to MOSA and SOSA? DRISCOLL: We’ve joined this consortium because it’s part of our ecosystem. It’s the responsible thing to do and these are www.militaryembedded.com

people we talk to a lot. Our interface is not [SOSA aligned]. We looked at all the options out there [and determined] to get the most out of our radar, because it’s sort of new and sort of different, we had to write a custom API, although it is an open API. We’re not looking to lock up ecosystems. We encourage everybody to roll their own integration to it. But in terms of what we’re hearing, yeah, MOSA is pretty much the buzzword of the day with DoD program managers and program office. So, some form of it is definitely flowing down. We’ll pretty quickly figure out how to bridge the gap and compatibility between our API and most of the formats.

MCHALE: When Echodyne was founded you said you explored at many different markets for your product. Who is your customer today? Is it mostly DoD? Do you sell directly to primes or to the end user? Do you compete with the primes?

DRISCOLL: I don’t think we compete with the primes. That’s hard to imagine. We’ve sold radars for applications ranging [from], in dynamic range and breath [beyond the DoD for applications such as] United States southern border security. For that Anduril tower that you mentioned, we are the radar that unlocks that tower and enables it to know where to point its camera. When we shipped them serial number one of EchoGuard, they put it on one of their towers, and they said, it was like somebody turned the lights on. During that first week of using [our] EchoGuard radar, they caught like 10 times the number of illegal crossings as they previously had.

Our uses range all the way from that, which is larger-scale, to somebody who’s using one of our radars to measure the speed and velocity of outbound golf balls. We’ve sold systems for a lot of different applications.

I can lump our ambitions really into three segments: the defense military market, the federal civilian market – like work with Customs and Border Patrol, and then critical infrastructure. Critical infrastructure [covers] everything from prisons to airports to stadiums that need systems to detect and to counter drones. [For these areas solutions scale] all the way down to what’s called perimeter intrusion detection systems, or PIDS. If you follow [U.S.] news, there’s been an increase in vandalism of electrical-transfer stations. Now, every electrical-transfer station of a certain size or above a certain criticality or above has to have one of these PIDS to detect if somebody has hopped the fence and is going to go do something not nice inside that electrical station. Those three verticals really capture 95% to 98% of our business, the DoD, [plus] sensitive and critical infrastructure verticals.

MCHALE: Your MESA radar is available off the shelf.

But on your website, you have a section for custom design: How much of what you do is custom?

DRISCOLL: Good question. Let me answer that by also returning and answering part of your previous one, which I skipped over. I said, I don’t think we’re a competitor in any way with the primes. I stand by that. I mean, any program of record is going to be owned and run through a prime. That’s just because they’re the trusted partners that have owned this www.militaryembedded.com

ecosystem for decades. So, if we’re on a program of record it’s as a component supplier as a subcontractor to and through a prime and that’s where we want to be. We want to sell OEM radar sensors, and almost nobody can use an OEM radar sensor by itself. There needs to be a system around it, needs to be software integration, there needs to be display, there probably going to be other sensors, there might need to be effectors that do something about a drone or a target when you see it.

Building out of that system, and interfacing with systems of systems is the work of the prime integrators. We’ve worked with just about all of them, we’re friendly with just about all of them. I know all of them have our product. We love it when we can sell the radars we have designed and built to them and that meets their needs.

But oftentimes, these primes pursue pretty sophisticated systems that can evolve radars that are beyond our design, understanding, or even just our resource capacity. But they still recognize that MESA technology is something new, and something disruptive. We get approached quite often with the question: Would we design a MESA antenna that they could use as a subsystem and plug it into their radar. They build all the radar back end, they do all the processing, they do everything, except we apply that phased-array substitution, that MESA ESA. When we do this, it’s typically around an opportunity with a sizable scale to it. We’re not a design shop. We don’t really want to be coin-operated to just do these designs for an NRE basis, and then leave them be. We’ll partner with prime integrators, or really anybody who’s got a big opportunity, to design a MESA antenna that we can sell to them at scale with the goal being product revenue around that subsystem.

MCHALE: What capabilities or do you have on your R&D roadmap? Are you going to bring back the invisibility cloak?

DRISCOLL: Yeah, I don’t know who I can sell an invisibility cloak to; I’m not sure who’s gonna pay for it.

One of the cool things about this type of electronic steering array is it really unlocks a lot of software capability. If you think about the ability to instantaneously point this beam in any one direction: Now you’ve got this control loop, that software inside the radar can utilize that to measure things better, measure things differently. We’ve got a lot of software work ahead of us, adding new features, improving performance, operating better in challenging environments, like really dense cities, where there’s a bunch of cars and potentially power wires everywhere.

Or at sea: Ocean clutter is an old and well-known adversary for radar. Sea waves are very challenging to deal with. So [we have] a lot of software work. Right now we’re doing the market research and diligence in each of these three verticals to see where we’re going to push our product portfolio. We certainly see an opportunity to move up in weight class in the defense and DoD space and build a longer-range, higher-power radar.

We also think that to unlock some of the truly high-scale critical infrastructure opportunity, we might want to build something that’s even a little smaller and cheaper than our lowest-end radar.

MES

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SPECIAL REPORT

Radar for missile/hypersonic defense

The Raytheon Lower Tier Air and Missile Defense Sensor (LTAMDS), an air defense radar designed to counter advanced threats. Image courtesy Raytheon.

Ukraine provides key lessons for missile defense radar on the battlefield

By Dan Taylor Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in early 2022 kicked off a new era of modern warfare. Drone strikes, hypersonic missiles, and the use of a wide spectrum of other weapons introduced the world to new threats on the battlefield. Radar systems are stretching their limits to keep up.

The war in Ukraine gives the defense industry a glimpse into how it must adapt radar systems to meet modern threats such as hypersonic missiles.

Industry experts are learning lessons that may fundamentally change the way they develop radar systems in the future.

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For the defense industry, Ukraine is a case study in the application and evolution of battlefield radar in modern warfare. As warfare becomes increasingly complex with the advent of new technologies and tactics, the role of radar systems in providing situational

MILITARY EMBEDDED SYSTEMS

awareness and threat detection is more critical than ever.

The Ukraine war demonstrates the challenges of modern-day warfare that companies must design radar to solve, notes a Raytheon (Arlington, Virginia) www.militaryembedded.com

is designed to detect and counter advanced threats – like hypersonic weapons – and it is equipped with three antenna arrays for 360-degree coverage in order to identify and engage multiple threats simultaneously. It is part of the company’s GhostEye family of radars.

Ground troops face a growing array of missile threats that must be countered by today’s defense systems.

The evolution of missile technology presents new risks on the battlefield – and radar must keep up in order to protect those troops.

Lothar Belz, head of public relations for Hensoldt (Taufkirchen, Germany), which supplies radars used in air defense systems sent to Ukraine, says his company has received “excellent operational feedback from Ukrainian stakeholders” that indicates they value mobility, extremely short reaction times, and resilience against electronic countermeasures (ECM).

Electronic warfare (EW) and battlefield radar have been critical in neutralizing diverse threats, says Dinesh Jain, product manager at Abaco Systems (Huntsville, Alabama). The conflict in Ukraine demonstrates how important it is to effectively differentiate between friend and foe, evolve strategies, and respond effectively to sensor inputs, he adds.

“A deeper dive into numerous public reports of attacks, defenses, and counter­ offenses points to the immense importance that electronic warfare and battlefield radar plays in neutralizing threats to protect civilians, resources, and infrastructure,” Jain continues. (Figure 1.)

Sensor fusion, the integration of data from various sources, and the networking of different radar systems are crucial components in modern warfare because they improve situational awareness and enable troops to respond more effectively, Jain continues.

The networking of radar systems, as observed in Ukraine, enables distributed sensing over a broader area, Jain continues: “Networking allows radar systems to be spread out in different areas as opposed to concentrated in a smaller area, reducing the risk of a targeted strike that completely neutralizes a defense asset.”

Figure 1 | Abaco Systems’ VP461: 6U VPX with dual RFSoC and DSP processing with 16 x 16 wideband RF channel synchronization.

spokesperson. “Airspace is congested and contested, with multiple, highly maneuverable threats traveling at various speeds and coming from all directions.

For air defenders, situational awareness is critical and must be more responsive than ever.”

Raytheon’s Lower Tier Air and Missile Defense Sensor (LTAMDS) for the U.S. Army www.militaryembedded.com

Missile threats expanding Ground troops face a growing array of missile threats that must be countered by today’s defense systems. The evolution of missile technology presents new risks on the battlefield – and radar must keep up in order to protect those troops.

Troops have to worry about all the traditional threats, such as anti-tank guided missiles (ATGMs), rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs), and air-to-surface missiles, but they also now have to contend with guided ammunition, armed drones, and hypersonic missiles, Belz says.

“Of course, the ‘non-missile’ threats [such as] small arms, artillery, mines which pose specific challenges to early warning and detection have not disappeared,” he adds.

There’s growing concern about the dynamic trajectory of hypersonic missiles, Jain says. These weapons operate at high speeds and are highly maneuverable, making it a challenge for current defense systems to engage them – or even for traditional radar to be able to spot them.

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SPECIAL REPORT

Radar for missile/hypersonic defense

“There is some debate about how sophisticated this specific missile really is, but it made clear that there is a gap in being able to defend against these types of threats as nations continue to invest in advanced missile technology designed to evade battlefield radar,” he says.

Belz says Hensoldt is focused on increasing the versatility in radar systems to counter a wider range of targets. He points out that modern radars must reduce exposure to enemy detection and ensure interoperability with various legacy systems, which they can achieve through the digitization of radar functionalities, the integration of passive sensors, and the use of open architectures.

Advancements in radar technology To match these threats, the defense industry is making big investments in radar technology, focusing on enhancing threat detection, tracking capabilities, and overall battlefield awareness.

Raytheon’s LTAMDS system is aimed at improving the range and sensitivity of U.S. Army radars so it can better counter advanced threats – such as drones, cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles. It uses three antenna arrays, with the primary in the front and two secondaries in the back.

“Working together, they can detect and engage multiple threats from any direction simultaneously,” the Raytheon spokesperson says. “Raytheon uses active electronically scanned array, or AESA, technology and military-grade gallium nitride, or GaN, made at its foundry in Andover, Massachusetts, to strengthen the LTAMDS radar signal and enhance its sensitivity for longer range, higher resolution, and more capacity.”

The high-performance signal processing subsystems for the LTAMDS are provided

by Mercury Systems, Inc. (Chelmsford, Massachusetts). The company recently signed a three-year subcontract to deliver hardware to Raytheon for the next nine LTAMDS radars to support the U.S. Army and Poland, the first international LTAMDS customer, according to a Mercury Systems release.

“Together with other improvements, the trend goes to multifunctional systems offering detection, electronic warfare, and networking capabilities in one system,” Belz says. (Figure 2.)

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) could also be gamechangers, Jain says, using the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) Missile Defense Agency’s Glide Phase Interceptor (GPI) program as an example. The GPI program aims to develop a missile-defense system capable of destroying hypersonic projectiles during their challenging

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Figure 2 | Hensoldt’s TRML-4D is a multifunctional air surveillance and target acquisition radar system used in Ukraine.

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pre-impact phase, and it is thought that AI could be useful for improving tracking and decision-making.

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“In addition to the general progression of high-speed, wideband data converters, sensor fusion, higher-speed data buses, and higher-density processing through advanced silicon packaging techniques, AI/ML at the edge is a new tool that is being leveraged to build more sophisticated radar systems,” he says.

MILITARY/CRITICAL

The role of open architecture Designing sophisticated radars and upgrading current systems will be enabled by open architectures and open standards like the Sensor Open Systems Architecture (SOSA). A modular open systems approach (MOSA) marks a paradigm shift from traditional, closed-system developments to more flexible, modular, and adaptable frameworks. Open architectures enable faster integration of commercial innovation reducing long-term life cycle costs.

Open systems make it easier for the defense industry “rapidly upgrade capabilities to counter emerging future threats,” the Raytheon spokesperson says.

Belz notes that ease of integration is key to continually improving radar systems, which is where open standards can make a big difference. “Open architectures are essential to build up distributed defense systems with all the elements – sensors, comms devices, weapons – feeding (and using) actionable intelligence from the whole network,” he adds.

The move toward open systems represents not just a technological shift but also a strategic one. It enables a more collaborative approach to defense technology development in which different vendors can contribute components that seamlessly integrate into a larger system. This means that the military can take advantage of advancements in the commercial arena, Jain says.

“One of the other lessons learned from [Ukraine] is the importance of advanced computer processing to run complex software and firmware to manage the sheer amount of data being generated by radar sensors and extract relevant intelligence,” he says.

“Leveraging the economies of scale provided by commercial silicon vendors and adapting it into standards-based form-factors [can help with] implementing increasingly complex threat-detection algorithms using AI/ML, rapid system upgrades, and time to deployment.” MES www.militaryembedded.com

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MIL TECH TRENDS

Leveraging the Sensor Open Systems Architecture (SOSA) for radar applications

Photo courtesy U.S. Department of Defense/U.S. Air Force.

Applying MBSE and ML to missile safety subsystems

By Brian Hetsko With the relatively recent adoption of model-based system engineering (MBSE) and digital mission engineering in military acquisition programs, there is a unique opportunity for the safety and instrumentation industry and regulators to take advantage of the many benefits and shorten the change to qualification cycles. It can also be a chance for the industry to leverage newer technologies such as autonomous decision-making and machine learning, now that these tools are maturing.

Missile and space launch flight safety and instrumentation systems are complicated and highly regulated critical infrastructures. The typical instrumentation and safety subsystems consist of, at a minimum, data acquisition, flight termination system (FTS), telemetry encoding and transmission, and positional/ navigation sensors. These subsystems are all tightly integrated and interdependent; however, the requirements and regulations associated with each

20 January/February 2024

are highly independent in their specification. Therefore, when platform developers and integrators are determining their approach to flight safety, considerations for all components must be paid with respect to the nuances of each and how they might relate to one another.

In a typical product development environment this doesn’t seem like anything out of the ordinary: Make the change, verify it, and deploy. But as is the case with most military systems and especially the range safety community, the validation, verification, and – ultimately – qualification processes are dramatically more time-consuming and expensive. Of course there’s a good reason – these regulations are in place to maximize reliability and predictability of the platforms, such as missiles and rockets being flown or launched, and the risk and safety posture associated with their use.

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www.militaryembedded.com

of electronic, mechanical, environmental, and software models. In fact, MBSE is ­presenting itself in all industries as the next evolution of the system engineering life cycle.

Establishment of an integrated framework for modeling complex component, subsystem, and system interactions across airborne systems and ground systems enables heightened coordination between the engineering teams. It also enables designers to integrate platforms, operating environments, communications (both RF and optical), and sensors including radar or EO/IR [electro-optical/infrared] for more effective and efficient development.

Since the 1950s, the specifications for range safety have been established by the Range Commanders Council (RCC) and its respective subgroups and standards body, Inter-Range Instrumentation Group (IRIG). Collectively these organizations define and enforce all of the standards for such metrics as environmental survivability, communications, protocols, and security associated with DoD and NASA ranges.

As with most military and space-related products and systems, strict traceability is maintained from concept through deployment and disposal following a traditionally stage-gated waterfall life cycle. The introduction of models and agile development has changed how the entire acquisition process can answer the needs of the warfighter. With increasingly high resolution and reliability models, the confidence that the designs and tests fully satisfy requirements is approaching completeness. If the regulations are considered as the prevailing requirements for any design, then the challenging process of tailoring can become clearer as the linkages of the requirements to the various subsystem models allow for impacts to be analyzed much earlier in the life cycle, ultimately accelerating acceptance.

Model-based system engineering (MBSE) provides an abstraction of the specification and design features from the typical document-driven methods of the past to those of models built in one of many software tools. The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) and other industries have been making slow strides towards MBSE for years, but only recently have programs and new weapons system developments mandated an MBSE approach from the start.

While software or computer-aided design has been ongoing for decades, the primary difference now is how those independent designs can be linked with the various types of system models.

There are functional, physical, and analytical models, and activity diagrams, to name a few; all of which are useful in this context. Now, as a system or subsystem is being designed there are features, behaviors, and interactions which can be simulated, through combinations www.militaryembedded.com

Application to flight termination The traditional method of flight termination, conducted by a person monitoring realtime telemetry, is being phased out of some use cases with the advent of autonomous flight termination. Autonomous flight termination units (AFTUs) receive some subset of the total telemetry payload and make a determination based on a rather prescriptive set of rules. The modalities of the rules are limited at this time but are constantly evolving. The parameters and bounds of these rules are established for each particular range and platform and once defined cannot easily adapt to changes in subsystem function or external stimulus without extensive verification. This is just one of the reasons that autonomous flight termination has been largely limited to space launch or ballistic flight; both are highly predictable flight profiles and therefore the modalities are equally deterministic.

Given that the primary, and minimum, required data for autonomous flight termination decision is related to position, vehicles such as air-to-air and air-to-ground missiles have less predictable behaviors, higher velocities, dynamic target acquisition, and have greater potential for damage or injury; other, larger-sized vehicles have more predictable failure modes and effects.

Using a model-based approach with added machine learning (ML), the possibility exists to more dynamically generate and validate the rule parameters, known as mission data load (MDL) for autonomous flight termination. The current limiting factor to adoption of autonomous flight termination by tactical platforms is the lack of the ability to rapidly and reliably adapt the parameters for different test conditions and locations.

For instance, different aircraft may carry the same weapon, so the profiles and conditions for termination are going to be very different. Using models for each platform and the associated behaviors, interfaces, and environments, a resulting behavior model can be created which can be validated through a series of simulations (e.g., Monte

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MIL TECH TRENDS

Leveraging the Sensor Open Systems Architecture (SOSA) for radar applications

Carlo) taking the results and feeding back into the model generation system c­ reating an adaptive cycle for high-reliability flight safety. Reinforcement learning (RL) is the likely branch of ML to be applied in this case in that it is a trial-and-error-based approach where the agent responds to a stimulus change and learns via responses to “reward” or “penalty” and converging on statistically ideal conditions for success.

For instance, a system model for a generic flight instrumentation and safety system is shown in Figure 1. In this model, the primary subsystems and their respective interactions and interfaces are all functioning as expected. The data link has an active bi­directional connection to the host platform; the PNT [position, navigation, and timing] subsystem has positive lock; the data acquisition system is receiving and processing data from dozens of sensors and telemetering it for monitoring; and the flight termination subsystem, assuming it is autonomous, is in its standard mode of receipt of data from other subsystems.

Within the modeling system, each subsystem can have its functions and behaviors modified very slightly and independently and the results – with respect to each interface – are then shared across the enterprise to understand the impacts to the other subsystems. This setup enables far more permutations than would be practical in a verification testing scenario.

For example, if the PNT system goes into a state where the timing or reliability are compromised, how that is handled by each connected system can be determined holistically, not only pairwise. In this case, the AFTU would detect an anomaly from a critical component, compare that to the required redundant path for decisions, and make a determination as to the PNT being unreliable or potentially in a failure mode and terminate the flight. Since the entire infrastructure is modeled in software, small adjustments can be made thousands of times to identify the permutations and limits which eventually converge on the final MDL parameters.

Not only do design changes to any subsystem affect the encapsulated system of systems, but also included in the sample model are the governing regulatory specifications. As shown, each basically has its own, so any change to those specifications can potentially trigger a platform-level validation and verification to ensure conformance.

Often these validation and verification activities can be satisfied by some level of analysis, typically statistical or heuristic.

Although edge conditions and negative testing are often either overlooked or dismissed due to cost, they can now be built into MBSE and ML models. Prior to any ratification, the impacts of every change can be understood relative to all of the subsystem models to which it is attached and the downstream effects. As most flight-safety and instrumentation subsystems are increasingly software- or firmware-defined, changes can now be deployed without having to invalidate any hardware configuration or qualification further supporting the tactical adoption. While MBSE is able to help with development of mission rules, ML will ultimately propel the advancement of instrumentation and safety system development through simulation-driven verification traceable to the regulatory requirements. MES Brian Hetsko has more than 20 years of aerospace and defense research and development experience in the areas of communications, signal processing, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance. He is currently the Director of Engineering at CAES in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

CAES • https://caes.com/

Figure 1 | Flight instrumentation system model where primary subsystems are functioning as expected.

22 January/February 2024

MILITARY EMBEDDED SYSTEMS

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BEHLMAN LEADS THE PACK AGAIN! FIRST PROVEN VPX POWER SUPPLIES DEVELOPED IN ALIGNMENT WITH THE SOSA™ TECHNICAL STANDARD

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INDUSTRY SPOTLIGHT

RF and microwave designs for electronic warfare

Talking electronic warfare trends, requirements, AOC with ADI’s Jerome Patoux Jerome Patoux Director of Aerospace & Defense for the Aerospace, Defense, and RF Products Business Unit of Analog Devices

24 January/February 2024

By John McHale, Group Editorial Director Prior to the 60th Annual AOC International Symposium & Convention, held in mid-December 2023 at the Gaylord Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland, I sat down with Jerome Patoux, Director of Aerospace & Defense for the Aerospace, Defense, and RF Products Business Unit of Analog Devices. We discussed the event, electronic warfare (EW), and spectrum dominance as well as RF and microwave design trends. Edited excerpts follow.

MILITARY EMBEDDED SYSTEMS

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MCHALE: What factors – threats, U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) priorities, etc. – are driving the DoD’s approach toward electronic warfare capabilities?

PATOUX: Perhaps the biggest challenge is the increased pace of sophisticated threats from short and long distances. It is critical to be able to adapt to the situations, be agile, and do that with flexible systems that can detect and respond to evolving electronic signatures and tactics, as well as defeat rapidly changing countermeasures.

There is a concerted push toward developing counter-countermeasures, which is the defense against attacks on electronic systems while conducting EW [electronic warfare] operations (jamming, cyber, and the like) and toward developing more proactive measures to stay ahead of potential threats.

We want to be able to track these threats as they develop, much like weather radars aim at detecting hurricanes at the

www.militaryembedded.com

earliest signs of their formation, and provide early warning for a countermeasure to take place. We are developing technology to detect weaker signals in contested environments, anywhere from space, air, land, and sea. And we want to take advantage of new technologies to push intelligence at the edge, so we can process a larger volume of data and remove the latency in decision-making. Analysis at the edge, where the signal is sensed, provides an advantage to users who are also better protected.

MCHALE: Often at AOC we hear about the need for spectrum dominance on the battlefield. What does that mean from your perspective?

PATOUX: Spectrum dominance consists of staying in control of the electromagnetic spectrum and being able to operate in contested environments.

A key aspect to gaining and keeping spectrum dominance and efficiently counter­ing new threats will be enabling the fast adoption of new technologies as well as upgrading the skill sets to maintain superiority of EW systems, as we integrate technological advancements in artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML), quantum technology, more efficient data processing, and enhanced RF and microwave technologies. System interoperability between EW systems, sensors, and platforms from the US and its allies – as well as integration and reduction in size, weight, power, and cost (SWaP-C) – will be critical for mission success.

MCHALE: How do these trends specifically affect performance, and I don’t mean just requirements for more performance? How specific can you be?

PATOUX: To maintain information superiority in such a dynamic threat environment, EW systems typically require higher frequency ranges (DC to tens of GHz, possibly higher

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INDUSTRY SPOTLIGHT in the future), faster scan times (wider iBW [instantaneous bandwidth], faster tune time), and adaptable filter technologies that operate with multiple blockers simultaneously. The DoD needs faster and easier access to high-performance ICs and subsystem solutions, and demands processing efficiency to cope with the changes in the digital landscape.

Indeed, there is a developing imperative to provide an efficient edge processing of large amounts of data, to enable faster, more efficient, and more effective decision-making. High-performance and reliable sensing, information integrity from the sensor to the bits, and low latency will be some of the key drivers for the quality and the speed of that decision, which trends to become more autonomous.

To enable fast adoption of new technologies that help achieve these objectives, Analog Devices has been providing prototyping and enablement platforms that provide full subsystem implementations,

RF and microwave designs for electronic warfare resolve a lot of the hardware challenges, and are used to accelerate program developments and reduce investments on prototyping.

Lastly, the demand for reducing SWaP-C and the need to do more in unchanged or smaller form factors is stronger than ever throughout new program developments, for example, in applications such as unmanned aerial vehicles and other airborne platforms, or unmanned underwater vehicles, etc. This is calling for higher levels of integration, adding more functionality in fewer slots in chassis, plus interoperability through modular open system approach (MOSA) strategies like the Sensor Open Systems Architecture (SOSA).

Leveraging standard form factors and interfaces are a big part of this. We are also seeing a technology requirement for convergence of RF and digital technologies by offering direct sampling to higher frequencies and by integrating more digital signal processing on-chip.

MCHALE: What do you expect to show at AOC? PATOUX: We are already talking to customers and end users about the requirements we just discussed. We are showcasing several technologies at the event; for example, we will be demonstrating our Apollo MxFE. This new wideband mixed-signal frontend platform offers instantaneous bandwidths as high as 10 GHz per channel while directly sampling and synthesizing frequencies up to 18 GHz (Ku band), with industryleading SFDR, all while maintaining situational awareness. This digitizer platform addresses many system challenges in electronic warfare such as wide spectrum coverage, detection of weak signals, cybersecurity, and situational awareness. MES

OpenSystems Media works with industry leaders to develop and publish content that educates our readers.

Countering the threat from quantum computers

By Infineon Quantum computers hold much promise for the future, yet their computing power poses a significant threat to current security methods such as public-key cryptography.

In this white paper, examine this issue in detail, learn about an approach for future security based on TPMs [Trusted Platform Modules], and read about current TPM technology. The paper details the security issues surrounding quantum computing as well as an understanding of the tools available to mitigate them, including how cryptography will evolve to provide security and trust in a post-quantum world.

Read this white paper: http://tinyurl.com/5cjy3424 26 January/February 2024

MILITARY EMBEDDED SYSTEMS

Read more white papers: https://militaryembedded.com/whitepapers www.militaryembedded.com

TECHNOLOGY MAKING YOUR HEAD SPIN? WE CAN HELP YOU MAKE SENSE OF IT ALL

Military Embedded Systems focuses on embedded electronics – hardware and software – for military applications through technical coverage of all parts of the design process. The website, Resource Guide, e-mags, newsletters, podcasts, webcasts, and print editions provide insight on embedded tools and strategies including technology insertion, obsolescence management, standards adoption, and many other military-specific technical subjects.

Coverage areas include the latest innovative products, technology, and market trends driving military embedded applications such as radar, electronic warfare, unmanned systems, cybersecurity, AI and machine learning, avionics, and more. Each issue is full of the information readers need to stay connected to the pulse of embedded militaryembedded.com technology in the military and aerospace industries.

INDUSTRY SPOTLIGHT

RF and microwave designs for electronic warfare

Robust power for RF/µW hybrid and digital phased arrays

By Sean D’Arcy, Michelle Lozada, Eric Faraci, and Wibawa Chou Beamforming and beam-steering technologies used in military applications have seen significant advances, especially when coupled with the emergence of 5G communications and commercial space data communications. This progress led to the introduction of active electronically scanned array (AESA) and/or phased-array systems, which are now more affordable and available in full digital and/or hybrid configuration. The majority of the active spectrum is now covered by these systems, making them suitable for use in radar, electronic warfare (EW), and various military communications systems.

Radar first transitioned from mechanically scanned to analog phased array in the 1970s primarily supporting military programs for tracking and fire control. These systems greatly enhanced the number of targets detected and tracked, showed greater resistance to blockers, reacted faster, and greatly reduced maintenance costs due to the reduction of mechanically steered parts.

The concept of a digital phased array, in which each element is controlled from an analog-to-digital (ADC) or digital-to-analog (DAC) pair, provides an order of magnitude better performance and operations across a larger part of the spectrum. Paired

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with powerful and configurable software, the technology is poised to displace most of the existing mechanically scanned and analog technologies due to its ability to perform digital beamforming/steering and direct digital sampling from each antenna element. Another major benefit is that losing a channel or antenna element has a negligible effect on system performance. www.militaryembedded.com

Significant cost barriers, along with power and thermal constraints, strangled deployment of these systems due to expensive and power-hungry, ADCs and DACs paired with equally powerhungry and costly field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). While concerns also lingered around latency and bus design, efficiency losses in the amplification and gain stages worsened the problem.

Major semiconductor efficiency improvements over the last five years have also lowered cost barriers, enabling deployment of next-generation phased-array designs. The challenge still remains, however, about how to efficiently power these systems in a way that considers watts consumed and radiated, yet is mindful of size and geometry constraints.

There are various considerations and solutions for powering military and space FPGAs, ADCs, DACs and other digital assets in designs that require higher reliability than automotive, industrial or consumer. Whether it be on-orbit, onwing, terrestrial, or in a munition, there are unique considerations to choosing a power solution that matches the robustness of the rest of the electronic design.

A compromise solution: hybrid phased array The compromise solution was to use a hybrid phased array in which the FPGAs, ADCs and DACs (let’s call them together “digitizers”) were fewer and moved farther away from the antenna.

The digitizers drove lower-power analog beamformer/beam-steering systems that in turn drove a sub-array. Gain could be inserted either before or after the beamformer, depending on the design.

(Figure 2.)

The primary drawbacks of this approach include redundant channel loss, spectrum reduction, and less array efficiency due to constraints driven by sub-array architecture. Advantages are less power consumption and reduced thermal concerns, lower cost, and the benefits of a mostly analog front end.

Over the last five years, we’ve seen significant improvements in power and www.militaryembedded.com

Figure 1 | Digital phased array: MxFE, or multifunction front end, contains a number of ADC/DAC pairs.

Figure 2 | A diagram shows a hybrid phased array.

thermal semiconductor efficiencies, with new competitors driving down prices to the point that next-generation phased-array systems are being deployed with a true digital architecture across many more applications and markets. But efficiently powering these systems remains a challenge given the watts consumed and wasted, and considers the size and geometry constraints due to the high density of electronics behind the antenna elements.

Of the key enablers of digital phased arrays (AESAs), let’s focus on the FPGA that is a critical component of both digital and hybrid systems. FPGAs are chosen to perform extremely fast calculations to support signal isolations, Fast Fourier Transforms (FFTs), and I/Q data extraction [in-phase (I) and quadrature (Q) elements] from systems that may be sampling 16 bits at 20 gigasamples per second (Gs/sec). When transmitting, the chain is reversed and the FPGA is also critical in calculations that form and steer the radio-frequency (RF) beams.

FPGAs require reliable sequenced power many times, consuming a high number of watts depending on duty cycle and active function. The three most important considerations in your power design for an FPGA in higher reliability applications are: 1. Maintaining voltage regulation on power rails: FPGA power rails have tight regulation requirements. The needs of these rails are progressively more challenging for newer FPGAs, where the target regulation and allowable tolerance are lower, while the load step transient increases.

2. Thermal management: Greater FPGA computing capability requires more power, a variable that adds more design complexity to prevent power-supply component temperatures from exceeding maximum limits. This reality is further exacerbated with FPGA trends, where the lower voltage-rail requirements

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INDUSTRY SPOTLIGHT

RF and microwave designs for electronic warfare

generally lead to lower efficiency (i.e., greater power loss of the power converter) and the desire to keep the power-supply area small concentrates loss into a tighter space and increases temperature rise.

3. Proper power up and down: The addition of new features and computing capabilities of FPGAs increases the number of power rails needed. Some FPGAs offer different ways for power management, where the options are generally between reducing power-conversion size and count around the FPGA versus additional flexibility for power-saving modes. All of these rails have strict requirements, which include: › Sequencing, where some rails need to come up and be in regulation before others, and vice versa during power down › Power supply ramp, where the voltage rail needs to rise monotonically within a specified time Powering FPGA and system level needs: point of load converters To meet these requirements, point of load (PoL) converters are typically used, where a DC-DC converter is placed as close to the FPGA “load” as possible. There are many variations of PoL converters, all of which have benefits and limitations. The ideal solution depends on both the FPGA and system level requirement, so a focused design is recommended. If a focused design is not used, the performance will either be reduced, the size will be excessively large, or there will be a significant thermal management challenge. (Figure 3.)

To have the right solution to power an FPGA load, the following design considerations are recommended.

First, select a control topology that meets design requirements while balancing performance. For example, a controller can have voltage mode control, which is simple, works over a wide range, and has good immunity to noise, but it suffers from poor transient performance which requires more output capacitors.

It could alternately have current mode control, which improves transient performance and allows for reduction in output capacitors, along with inherent current protection to protect against fault events.

This comes at the expense of increased sensitivity to noise and more complex compensation design. It could additionally have constant on-time (COT) control, where it has the best transient performance possible, allowing for smallest output capacitance, but it requires variable switching frequency which can interfere with sensitive RF payloads.

Second, choose a power stage that works well. For loads that are 40 A or below, single-stage buck converters typically are the most common. There are many solutions that integrate the controller and power FETs [field-effect transistors] – referred to as integrated point of load (IPoL) – which simplify design and are small. For higher-current applications, multiphase operation becomes more popular since the parallel power stages reduce ripple current and allow for less output capacitance, increase efficiency by reducing peak current through any single component, improve transient performance, and spread out power losses over a larger area, therefore reducing peak temperature.

Figure 3 | Shown: an Infineon power reference design for Xilinx UltraScale Kintex FPGA.

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Third, pick a controller with the right level of programmability. Options can range from simple analog controllers, where parameters are either set at the factory or set with a resistor or capacitor on a pin, to fully digital controllers with communication protocols like PMBus where monitoring and control can enable a high degree of remote operation. www.militaryembedded.com

The challenge still remains, however, about how to efficiently power

Eric Faraci is a principal applications engineer for IR HiRel, an Infineon Technologies company. Eric has nearly 10 years of experience in power semiconductor development. He has B.S. and M.S. degrees from Virginia Tech.

these systems in a way that considers watts consumed and radiated, yet is mindful of size and geometry constraints.

Can these power solutions handle it?

In conclusion, FPGAs play a critical role in digital and hybrid phased arrays.

Starting up and powering these digital assets in military and space designs can be complex, especially with the higher levels of reliability needed in these applications. Choosing the right power solution to match the robustness of the FPGA and system is key. While the newest developments for AESA are advancing fast, designers can feel confident that there are power solutions already deployed and mature enough to support these systems. MES Sean D’Arcy is an aviation, space, and defense industry veteran with more than 30 years in engineering, marketing, piloting, and program management leadership at BAE Systems, Honeywell Defense, Northrop Grumman and more.

Sean has experience in manned and unmanned airborne systems, on-orbit space vehicles, and system designs for radar, military communications, electronic warfare, and intelligent munitions. He is currently senior marketing director at IR HiRel, an Infineon Technologies company.

Michelle Lozada has more than 20 years of experience in semiconductor systems, services, and hardware. She is currently head of digital marketing communications at IR HiRel, an Infineon Technologies company.

Michelle holds a B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley, and an MBA from Pepperdine University. www.militaryembedded.com

Wibawa Chou received his B.S. and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering from Ohio State University; he has been with Infineon Technologies since 2001 and has more than 20 years of experience in power electronic design and applications. Wibawa is currently responsible for technical marketing of power solutions at IR HiRel, an Infineon Technologies company.

Infineon • https://www.infineon.com/

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MILITARY EMBEDDED SYSTEMS

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INDUSTRY SPOTLIGHT

RF and microwave designs for electronic warfare

Cores and threads: Hybrid processors for today’s multitasking world

By Aaron Frank The incredible growth of processing parallelism has resulted in a corresponding explosion of performance and capabilities, but not all cores and threads are created equally. For mainstream computer users, such as the vast majority of Windows users, the detailed usage of cores and threads is not important for the user to understand. After editing a document, we hit the <SAVE> icon, and all the magic happens under the hood. But for designers of critical real-time processing systems, what happens under the hood matters. With a more detailed understanding of the latest hybrid core processor enhancements, military embedded systems designers – whether designing for land, sea, or air use – can build more deterministic and responsive processing systems and at the same time maintain better control over power consumption, resulting in SWaP [size, weight, and power] savings and longer-duration missions.

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www.militaryembedded.com

Multiple Cores

Thousands of Cores

Figure 1 | Processing cores are shown in a CPU versus a GPU.

which enables a processing core to execute two independent instruction threads simultaneously, mimicking a dual-core processor. Thus, a 64-core dual-threading processor can execute 128 independent threads simultaneously. Taken to the extreme, today’s high-end graphics processors (GPUs) can execute thousands of simultaneous operations, which is fundamental for highly parallel 3D visualizations and complex AI [artificial intelligence] processing tasks. (Figure 1.)

Today, finding a processor with just a single processing core is difficult. In 2000, IBM introduced the concept of a dual-core processor in their Power4 processor. AMD followed in 2005 with the Opteron 800 and Athlon 64 X2 processors, each with two processing cores.

Intel gained commercial success with their dual-core processor in 2006 with the Pentium Core2 processor.

Today, almost two decades later, it is not uncommon to see data centers running tens of thousands of processors, each with 64 or more cores. In addition to multiple processing cores, many architectures also support hyper-threading, www.militaryembedded.com

Processor evolution and architecture Figure 2 illustrates a simplified view of a generic single-core processor. Important to this discussion is the data flow to and from a processing core. With few exceptions, a processor is paired with external main memory, where instructions and data are stored. Accessing even today’s fastest DRAM memory subsystems is considered slow compared to the speed at which the core operates. To ensure the processing core does not sit idle waiting for memory interactions, most processors incorporate cache memory, which is a region of extremely fast local memory operating at the core speed, which mirrors regions (sometimes referred to as pages) of the external DRAM memory. If instructions and data are preloaded into the local cache memory, the processing core can run at full speed without waiting. Unfortunately, if the needed instructions or data are not preloaded in the local cache memory, the processing core will become stalled while the rest of the CPU fetches the required data from external DRAM memory into the cache. This cache miss results in a loss of performance.

Core

Cache

Bus

Memory Controller

I/O

Figure 2 | A simplified view shows a generic single-core processor.

Because cache memory is expensive in terms of silicon space, most processors have multiple levels of cache. The cache closest to the processor, called the L1 cache, is the smallest and fastest, with progressively larger size and slower access caches as you move further from the processing core (L2 cache, L3 cache, etc.). In a multicore processor, each core typically has its own L1 cache, and often, multiple cores will share L2 or L3 cache regions. Figure 3 illustrates two generic quad-core processors. One has only two cache levels, with an L1 cache for each core and an L2 cache shared amongst the four cores. The second example has an L1 cache for each core, an L2 cache shared amongst each pair of cores, and an L3 cache shared across all four cores.

It is important to note that for a multicore processor, the architecture has areas where multiple cores share common

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RF and microwave designs for electronic warfare

resources. It may be a shared cache memory region, a shared main interface bus, or a shared memory controller. The implication is that two cores may not be able to fully operate independently – there will be some interaction due to contention with shared resources. Thus, a dual-core architecture cannot provide a full doubling of performance compared to a single-core architecture. Similarly, a quad-core processor will not provide four times the performance. Real-world conditions reduce this performance to something less.

to users. For example, an Apple iPhone 13 uses the Apple-designed A15 Bionic Arm processor with two big cores and four LITTLE cores. When not actively in use, the phone will utilize only LITTLE cores, putting the big cores to sleep to reduce power consumption.

Multicore versus hyper-thread In 2002, Intel introduced the concept of hyper-threading: In a true multicore processor, the core is duplicated, and each core has its own L1 cache, as shown on the left of Figure 4. A hyper-threading core is just a single core that appears to the operating system (OS) as two logical cores, as shown on the right of Figure 4. A hyper-threading core is accomplished by using an internal superscalar architecture, in which multiple instruction streams can operate on independent instruction and data in parallel.

Adoption of a hybrid processor core architecture While not the first to make use of a hybrid core architecture, Intel has introduced its equivalent to the Arm big.LITTLE architecture, offering hybrid core processors with what they call “performance” cores (aka big or P-cores) and “efficient” cores (aka LITTLE or E-cores).

A hyper-threading core has more shared resources than two independent cores, and its overall performance in real-world applications is expected to be correspondingly lower than two separate processing cores.

Whereas Intel x86 and NXP Power Architecture provide hyper-threading cores in many of their processors, the Arm architecture does not offer hyper-threading. An Arm core is simply a single-threaded core. A 16-core Arm processor, such as the NXP LX2160A, provides 16 fully independent cores and can execute 16 independent threads. In contrast, an Intel eight-core processor such as the Tiger Lake Xeon W-11865MRE provides eight hyper-threading cores and presents as 16 logical processing cores to the OS. big.LITTLE Architecture In 2011, ARM Holdings introduced the first processor with what it called the big.

LITTLE architecture. Realizing that real-world multitasking systems have a wide range of processing and performance needs, the architecture pairs some “big” cores optimized for high-performance with some “LITTLE” cores optimized for higher efficiency and sacrifices some amount of performance. Systems that make use of big.LITTLE processors will direct background and noncritical functionality to the LITTLE cores and will direct foreground and user-oriented functionality to the big cores. The goal of a big.LITTLE processor is to ultimately save power, a critical resource in batteryoperated equipment such as laptops and cell phones, and to ensure responsiveness

The Intel 12th-gen “Alder Lake” and 13th-gen “Raptor Lake” processor families include embedded processor SKUs with up to 16 cores, consisting of eight performance P-cores and eight efficient E-cores. With Intel P-cores cores supporting hyper-threading, the processor presents to the OS as a 24 logical core processor (eight hyper-threading P-cores and eight single-thread E-cores).

Using hybrid processing cores Operating systems are now becoming aware of different application processing needs. Foreground processes, such as those interacting with users (applications in focus, visual displays, user interaction via mouse and keyboards, etc.), can be assigned to big/Performance cores

Core 0

Core 1

Core 2

Core 3

Core 0

Core 1

Core 2

Core 3

L1 Cache

L1 Cache

L1 Cache

L1 Cache

L1 Cache

L1 Cache

L1 Cache

L1 Cache

L2 Cache

L2 Cache

L2 Cache

L3 Cache

Bus

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Bus

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Figure 3a Figure 3a and 3b | A view of multicore processors shows multiple and shared cache levels.

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Memory Controller

I/O

Figure 3b

www.militaryembedded.com

to provide the best user experience, with background activities (low-priority tasks, utility functions, system management, etc.) can be assigned to LITTLE/ Efficient cores where high performance is not required.

Core usage in multitasking operating systems › Intel Thread Director To make the best use of P-cores and E-cores, Intel provides a technology called the Thread Director to the OS. This technology enables the OS scheduler to assign tasks to P-cores and E-cores based on each task’s characteristic needs for performance versus efficiency. › Microsoft Windows 11 Under Windows 11, the Thread Director works closely with the Windows task scheduler, which has been enhanced to be aware of hybrid processor architectures. In this enhancement, the Windows 11 task scheduler considers P-cores, E-cores, and hyper-threads on P-cores when scheduling tasks. In addition, the Windows 11 task scheduler and the Intel Thread Director also monitor other processor parameters, such as clock speeds, power consumption, and thermal conditions.

Under Windows 11, workloads are monitored and classified as follows: › Class 0: Most applications › Class 1: Workloads using AVX/AVX2 instructions › Class 2: Workloads using AVX-VNNI instructions › Class 3: Bottleneck is not in the compute, e.g., I/O or busy loops that don’t scale Anything in Class 3 is recommended for E-cores. Anything in Class 1 or 2 is recommended for P-cores, with Class 2 having higher priority. Everything else fits in Class 0, with frequency adjustments to optimize for IPC [instructions per cycle] and efficiency if placed on the P-cores. Even with all these conventions, the OS may still choose or be directed to assign any thread or class of workload to any core. Windows 11 also considers the computer’s selected power plan, where a high-performance power plan will perform differently than a balanced or battery-saver plan. www.militaryembedded.com

Single Core Processor with Hyper-Threading

Processor with Two Cores Instruction Stream

Instruction Stream

Core 1

Core 2

ALU

Instruction Stream

ALU

Instruction Stream

Core ALU

(registers, logic, etc.)

(registers, logic, etc.)

(registers, logic, etc.)

Cache

Cache

Cache

System Bus

System Bus

Figure 4 | Shown: multicore versus hyper-threading core.

Figure 5a

Figure 5b

Figure 5a and 5b | An Alder Lake processor under Windows 10 showing an application in focus and out of focus.

› Microsoft Windows 10 While the Thread Director also works with Microsoft Windows 10, the Windows 10 task scheduler is not designed to work optimally with the Thread Director. Under Windows 10, the scheduler assigns P-cores to the application in focus, meaning the currently highlighted application window. If an application is taken out of focus, either by minimizing the application or highlighting a different application window, the Thread Directory reassigns the application to E-cores. Some users have reported mixed feedback with these processors under Windows 10, with the main concern being applications that are inactive or not in focus underperform when directed to E-cores.

Figure 5 shows the core usage of an Intel Alder Lake i7-12700H processor with 20 logical processor threads (6 P-cores with hyper-threading plus 8xE-cores). The first 12 graphs (from top left) show the workload of P-core threads, and the last eight graphs are E-core threads. The figure on the left shows that all 20 cores are in use when the application is in focus, driving the processor to an overall utilization of 77%. The figure on the right shows that when the application is minimized or taken out of focus, the application is removed from the P-cores and only executes on the lower-performance E-cores, driving them to maximum usage. The overall processor utilization is reduced to 53%, which reflects that the application task is likely underperforming with E-cores, while the P-cores mostly sit idle.

Also of interest: These screen captures provide a process count and a thread count, which gives insight into the number of total application processes and threads the OS is concurrently managing. In these examples, there are 229 or 223 processes running, and 3,345 or 3,349 application threads running. While many of these processes and threads may be sleeping or idle, most will wake up periodically to perform a task or status check.

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INDUSTRY SPOTLIGHT

RF and microwave designs for electronic warfare

› Linux As of early 2023, apparently to address some reported performance bugs with the 12th-gen Alder Lake processor, Intel has added some, but not all, aspects of Linux-kernel interaction with its Thread Director to Linux kernel 5.18. Officially, however, Intel has only stated publicly that Windows 11 is their priority, and they would be upstreaming a variety of features in the Linux kernel over time. More recently, it has been reported that Linux kernel 6.2 has added further support for Intel’s 13th-gen Raptor Lake hybrid processors, including enhancements for the Thread Director.

Linux users have always had the ability to manually assign processes to logical processor cores using the taskset() command. With specific knowledge of which logical processors are P-cores and which are E-cores, it is not difficult to manually assign

process affinity to specific cores. This can provide an embedded software developer incredible flexibility using hybrid core processors.

Hybrid cores going forward Approximately 70% of mobile phones today operate with processors using the Arm big.LITTLE architecture. Intel, one of the largest processor suppliers, has adopted a hybrid (P-core/E-core) core architecture with their last two generations of consumer processors and appears to be focused on extending this architecture for future generations.

The mainstream commercial processing world has embraced the benefits of the hybrid core architecture.

While the aerospace and defense industry has yet to widely adopt the hybrid core processor, it is hard to ignore the potential benefits of this new technology, which promises an increase in processing efficiency. Size, weight, and power (SWaP) remain a primary consideration for all new developments, and any opportunity to increase processor efficiency will directly benefit a defense solution’s SWaP footprint. MES

No Boundaries!

When engineers need resistors for critical missions in a no-replace environment like Mars, they choose State of the Art. We are aboard three Mars orbiters: Odyssey, MRO, and Maven. We have been aboard all five NASA rovers that have or are exploring the surface of Mars: Sojourner, Spirit, Opportunity, Curiosity, and Perseverance.

We are also aboard the InSight Lander that studied the interior of Mars.

Working toward a manned mission to Mars, NASA chose State of the Art resistors. Whose resistors will you choose for next mission?

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Aaron Frank is senior product manager for CurtissWright Defense Solutions and has been with the company since 2010.

As a senior product manager within the C5ISR group, he is responsible for a wide range of COTS products utilizing advanced processing, video graphics/GPU and network-switching technologies in many industry-standard module formats (VME, VPX, etc.). His focus includes product development and marketing strategies, technology roadmaps, and being a subject-matter expert to the sales team and with customers. Aaron has a bachelor of science/electrical engineering degree from the University of Waterloo (Ontario).

Curtiss-Wright Defense Solutions https://www.curtisswrightds.com/

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MILITARY EMBEDDED SYSTEMS

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EXPANDING MARKETS CALL FOR TIMELY, RELIABLE INFORMATION

LET’S EXPLORE NEW WORLDS TOGETHER

Military Embedded Systems focuses on embedded electronics – hardware and software – for military applications through technical coverage of all parts of the design process. The website, e-mags, newsletters, podcasts, virtual events, annual Resource Guide, and print editions cover topics including radar and electronic warfare, artificial intelligence/machine learning, uncrewed systems, C5ISR, avionics, and cybersecurity. Don’t miss any of it!

Military Embedded Systems is also the largest source for coverage of the Sensor Open System Architecture (SOSA) Technical Standard and the Future Airborne Capability Environment (FACE) Technical Standard. We exclusively produce the once-yearly SOSA Special Edition and FACE Special Edition.

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INDUSTRY SPOTLIGHT

RF and microwave designs for electronic warfare

An MH-47G Chinook helicopter from the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (SOAR) approaches the shore during an exercise near Hurlburt Field, Florida. Photo by Photo by Maj. Jeff Slinker, 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (Airborne).

Countering unpredictable future threats demands MOSA

By Jeff Woods and Tammy Yost

Distributed multidomain and joint all-domain operations (MDO and JADO, respectively) are becoming the defining doctrines of a new era on the battlefield. JADO integrates platforms, sensors, weapons, and joint all-domain command and control (JADC2) systems used to synchronize aircraft, ground forces and vehicles, satellites, and ships. An unprecedented onslaught of data involves comprehensive connectivity, which means linking complex sensors, processors, and effectors to support required environmental and electrical performance specifications. Time-sensitive applications, such as tracking, moving targets, and defensive countermeasures, need ever-faster data throughput.

Today’s threats can morph before warfighters receive the new systems designed to counter them. For acquisition decision-makers to keep pace, the U. S. Department of Defense (DoD) endorses

38 January/February 2024

a modular open systems approach (MOSA). MOSA seeks to transform system design, development, integration, and sustainment for future military systems.

Yet some MOSA-enabled installations are inadequate because digital architectures lack equally robust interconnects. Interconnect systems should be future-proof while

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reducing the overall cost of ownership.

Interconnects that enable operational systems must be resilient to harsh environments of perpetual combat and training operations. They should further provide significant performance margins to support future capability requirements and upgrades. Finally, as rapid increases in computing power continue unabated, backbones must have sufficient expandability and reliability to maximize functions, whether they depend on RF, microwave, or other architectures.

Figure 1 | Effects of auto-negotiation: A poorly performing cable can cause a system to auto-negotiate to a slower data rate, reducing resolution and diminishing the benefits of expensive sensors.

The solution: Engineers must consider systems trade-offs, balancing critical size, weight, and power with survivability metrics. These factors are vital to MOSA success, which, more than defining cards, boxes, and subsystems, must include interconnects.

Building successful MOSA-enabled digital systems faces four formidable challenges: 1. Cable selection, making optimal trade-offs over time and system requirements, e.g., throughput, size, weight, and power.

2. Post-installation, ensuring interconnect architectures are effectively designed for installed performance.

3. Overall cost of ownership, codifying specifications into solicitations requiring lower life cycle costs via standardization, interoperability, and plug-and-play upward compatibility.

4. Staying power, guaranteeing winning choices remain so in three years, when threats have likely morphed.

Ensuring performance after installation Currently, most programs do not measure performance difference between data cables through pre-installation, post-installation, and operational use.

Considering potential damage during installation, validation of post-installation interconnectivity is imperative to establish a baseline for signal integrity.

The DoD says that for standardized interfaces, programs must have a method for verifying compliance with the standard. www.militaryembedded.com

Figure 2 | Return loss comparison is shown after routing of Ethernet cables.

Although DoD encourages digital modeling, models must mirror data links considering post-installation signal integrity performance. Otherwise, installation itself might cause system susceptibility to degrading factors like changing temperatures, electromagnetic interference (EMI) and mechanical stress, which can affect performance and reduce bandwidth without warning.

Poor cable performance caused by near-end cross-talk (NEXT) increased insertion loss, impedance mismatches, etc., often leading to insidious impacts like auto-negotiation (slowed data rates) with no indication in the cockpit. A system using sub-standard Ethernet CAT6a cables at 10 gigabits per second (Gbps) could move data at 1 Gbps without operator indication. Unintentionally slowed data speeds, induced by poor connectivity, endanger mission-critical systems, aircraft survivability equipment and other sensor systems as well as warfighters.

For illustration purposes only, Figure 1 (left) shows sensor performance differences where the data signal has been auto-negotiated to a slower speed on the left compared to full resolutions throughput on the right.

Change in system performance can be explained by looking at test results of Ethernet cable performance in Figure 2. This graph illustrates comparative signal testing of three different cables following a simulated installation. Although all three met industry specifications before installation and routing, only one clearly met and exceeded the specified performance after installation. That Ethernet cable maintained a sufficient margin below the specification limit for return loss compared to alternative cables 1 and 2, which either partially failed or failed to meet the specification, leading to poor signal transmission. These results demonstrate that installed performance varies based on quality and resilience of selected cables.

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INDUSTRY SPOTLIGHT

RF and microwave designs for electronic warfare

Trading off data cables for performance, size, and weight Robust interconnects are fundamental to mission and maintenance success. From installation through operation, data cables confront rapid temperature and pressure changes as well as potential contamination from fluids like fuels and oils. Several options can maintain signal integrity in this environment. Figure 3 compares the signal loss of two CAT6a cables at an elevated temperature of 100 °C and emphasizes the need for safety margin at room temperature to allow for degradation at elevated temperatures that may prevent CAT6a cables from meeting requirements.

As aircraft are upgraded, requirements for data increase exponentially. Planning ahead keeps legacy and enduring fleet aircraft and vehicles ready for upgrades without costly re-wiring efforts. Although CAT6a is the current default choice for copper Ethernet, options are available for CAT8 performance with 4x the data rate at the same size and weight and enabling less costly and complex future upgrades.

Lighter than copper with a much higher weight-to-data ratio, fiber-optic cables are immune to EMI, radio frequency interference (RFI), and crosstalk when transmitting signals. Smaller, more durable fiber-optic cables have evolved to become relevant options for modern aircraft and vehicle applications.

For example, the Army recently selected a fiber-optic interconnect system on its Limited Interim Missile Warning System (LIMWS) for the UH-60 Black Hawk rotorcraft fleet. The system processor serves as the high-bandwidth digital backbone of

Figure 3 | Insertion loss comparison of Ethernet cables at elevated temperature is shown.

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the system. It houses advanced machinelearning missile warning algorithms specifically designed for complex, high-clutter environments and rapid threat updates.

This system is migrating to other Army rotorcraft, including the AH-64 Apache rotorcraft. The fiber-optic cable system easily handles this current requirement with sufficient margin for the next-generation Integrated Threat Detection System.

Jeff Woods is market development leader for W. L. Gore-Americas. Previously he was a program manager at Northrop Grumman. Jeff knows threats firsthand: For 25 years he served as a naval flight officer, retiring at the rank of Commander. During 13 deployments, he flew more than 140 combat missions. Readers may email him at jefwoods@wlgore.com.

Lowering overall cost of ownership Interconnect technology choices benefit design decisions, from maintenance hours, line-replaceable unit (LRU) longevity, and testing to troubleshooting, repair and replacement, and aircraft availability.

W. L. Gore www.gore.com/products/industries/aerospace

For example, the U.S. Army 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (SOAR) had an RF cable issue with its aircraft survivability equipment (ASE) systems.

After analyzing the issue on the MH-47 Chinook rotorcraft, they replaced existing cables with an alternative designed for the environment. The program office was impressed they no longer had routine failures on an installed cable set. Improved reliability equated to improved availability with reduced maintenance and sustainment costs.

MOSA’s inherent benefit to upgrade capabilities depends on interconnect architectures with significant margin built in during the design cycle. Margin can negate costly, time-consuming interconnect A-kit upgrades when installing new MOSA-enabled capabilities.

Investing in a reliable MOSA future As new threats proliferate, service personnel will increasingly rely on modular systems, requiring greater data throughput, to keep ahead of the threats.

Similarly, acquisition professionals must consider all performance factors and trade-offs against future projected needs.

Interconnect technology based on lowest price/technically acceptable solutions will not provide warfighters with the edge they need. Only highly reliable, future-proof interconnect architectures will realize mission and maintenance goals at greatest value to all stakeholders. Decisionmakers must acknowledge these vital pieces of the MOSA puzzle. MES www.militaryembedded.com

Tammy Yost, Ph.D., is the chief technologist for Defense Systems at W. L. Gore & Associates, Inc. with more than 20 years of experience developing high-performance digital and RF cable products across multiple markets. She can be reached at tyost@wlgore.com.

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EDITOR’S CHOICE PRODUCTS

Microwave power modules for all domains Stellant Systems produces a line of microwave power modules (MPMs), which consist of a miniature helix traveling-wave tube (TWT), a solid-state amplifier (SSA) driver, and a miniature power supply. They are designed to be used in various domains, as they are qualified for applications including space, ground, sea, and airborne environments. Common uses for these modules would be uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs), radar systems, electronic countermeasures (ECM) systems, along with portable and mobile satellite communication (SATCOM) systems and point-to-point communications.

The MPMs feature a frequency range from 2 GHz to 235 GHz with output power ranging from 40 W to more than 300 W. They can operate on various power sources including 270 VDC, 28 VDC, or 115 VAC 3-phase prime power. These small-sized and low-weight parts are suitable for continuous wave (CW) and/or pulsed operations and are fully compatible with software-defined radios.

Additional options offered include optimization for narrow-band applications, customization for specific power versus frequency requirements, an integral equalizer and/or linearizer, a pulse modulator included in all models, and an optional forced-air heat exchanger. Stellant offers a compact version, the NanoMPM, aimed at applications where size and weight are critical. This model is also qualified for space, airborne, sea, or ground use.

Stellant | https://stellantsystems.com/

VPX-based 4-channel downconverter FEI-Elcom Tech's VPXST-6503 is a VPX-based 4-channel downconverter designed for advanced off-board electronic warfare (AOEW). The device is tailored to meet the demanding requirements of electronic warfare (ECM), monopulse radar receivers, radar warning receiver (RWR), and real-time spectrum analysis (RTSA) applications.

The downconverter is available in different frequency ranges, including standard 6 to 18 GHz, an extended option of 2 to 18 GHz, and an ultrawide option of up to 67 GHz. The VPXST-6503 can accommodate two 6U VPX slots (option for one 6U VPX) and can perform ultra-fast tuning and support four tuners in a 6U VPX, two-slot-wide configuration. The device features phase-coherent switching and includes a built-in sharp anti-aliasing L-band bandpass filter for optimized instantaneous bandwidth (IBW).

In terms of performance, the VPXST-6503 offers a step size of 10 MHz with a tuning speed of less than 1 microsecond, with integrated phase noise of less than 0.5 degrees RMS [root mean square]. The RF section features a noise figure of 15 dB typical at maximum gain, RF attenuation of 26 dB with a 2 dB step, and an RF preselector with four bands. The maximum input level is +15 dBm without damage, with a voltage standing wave ratio (VSWR) of 2:1.

FEI-Elcom Tech | https://fei-elcomtech.com/

Deployable wideband recorder and receiver CRFS produces the RFeye SenS Remote, a deployable wideband recorder and receiver designed for secure, unsupervised recording in locations like masts or towers. The part features full-rate wideband I/Q [in-phase and quadrature] streaming using the power of commercial offthe-shelf (COTS) processors. Key features include a remote radio head for minimized cable losses and enhanced sensitivity, gapless 16-bit I/Q data recording at up to 100 MHz IBW [instantaneous bandwidth], and has a number of customizable long-term rack-mounted storage solutions.

This system streams data via fiber-optic cables to COTS processors and storage units housed in secure environments. The processor operates in two modes: as a Node for faster processing of detectors and DSP [digital signal processing] algorithms, and in Recorder mode running DeepView forensic analysis software, accessible remotely for data analysis. The SenS Remote can stream full-rate 100MHz IBW data, enabling extensive recording of vital RF signals. Its hot-swappable disks allow for continuous data capture, useful for intelligence analysis and operational planning.

The RFeye SenS Remote is suitable for scenarios ranging from border security to emergency communications training; it can also be paired with other RFeye Nodes for a comprehensive electronic warfare/signals intelligence solution as it can take advantage of advanced geolocation functions with extensive I/Q capture and analysis capabilities.

CRFS | https://www.crfs.com/ 42 January/February 2024

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EDITOR’S CHOICE PRODUCTS

3U/VPX module for tactical and range systems The ADEP ULTRA 3U/VPX Module is a dynamic engagement system designed for tactical and range systems featuring flight qualification. This rugged module operates within a frequency range of 100 MHz to 20 GHz and is capable of generating as many as 4,000 false targets, making it suitable for complex military simulations and training scenarios. The module features kinematic scenario programming, supports multiple complex target cluster scenarios, and offers multiple output channels for advanced simulations including moving target indicator (MTI) and synthetic aperture radar (SAR).

Key specifications of the ADEP ULTRA include an instantaneous bandwidth of 1 GHz and a bit depth of 12 in/12 out (LVDS) and 14 in/16 out (JESD). It has a dynamic range of over 60 dB, with a pulse width ranging from 15 ns to continuous wave (CW). The module's pulse repetition frequency (PRF) range goes from 1 Hz to 5 MHz, offering a target delay from 200 ns to 750 us in pipeline mode, and from 200 ns to 1s in pulse storage mode. The delay resolution stands at 0.625 ns, with a Doppler range of +/-650 MHz. It also features a phase resolution of 0.1 degrees and an amplitude resolution of 0.25 dB. The target update rate exceeds 25 KHz, ensuring rapid response in dynamic scenarios, with gain flatness within +/- 1 dB. As a 3U VPX module, it is designed to fit into standard VPX slots, providing ease of integration with existing systems. Its target-generation capabilities and variable target range delay make it usable for a wide array of military applications, particularly in training and simulation exercises that require high fidelity and dynamic engagement scenarios.

SPEC | https://www.spec.com/

Bandpass and notch filters for radar, comms Pole/Zero (a Microwave Products Group business) offers the IMF Series, new digitally tunable bandpass and notch filters aimed at use in applications that require extremely small size, ultrafast tuning speeds, and high performance. The filters are suitable for a variety of applications including military radios, military radar, electronic warfare (EW), SATCOM-on-the-move (SOTM), RF front ends, and commercial communications. The IMF Series filters are available in multiple frequency bands across the 1.5 GHz to 24 GHz frequency range, suiting them for a wide range of communications and detection systems.

The performance capabilities of the IMF Series include phase noise at -145 dBc/Hz at 10 kHz offset, an input power of +30dBm for 10% bandwidth, and a third-order intercept point (IIP3) of +35 dBm minimum, typically +40 dBm. The filters exhibit an average insertion loss of 3.4 dB for 10% bandwidth and a selectivity of 20 dBc at the center frequency ± 10% for 4% bandwidth. In terms of power requirements, the filters operate on +5V at 20 μA typical power. The tuning speed is 250 ns typically below 6 GHz, and 25 μs typically above 6 GHz. The control interfaces for tuning include GPIO Tuning Control above 6 GHz and GPIO or SPI below 6 GHz. The IMF Series is characterized by its proprietary design, ensuring high-quality filter performance. The filters are offered in package sizes ranging from 4 x 4 mm to 12 x 12 mm QFN [quad-flat-no-lead] packages, with an operating temperature range of -40 °C to +85 °C. Pole/Zero also provides an IMF demo loaner mounted on an evaluation board at no cost.

Microwave Products Group | https://www.mpgdover.com/

VITA 62-compliant power converters Vicor’s VITA 62-compliant power converters are MIL-COTS-compliant power supplies designed specifically for 3U and 6U OpenVPX systems. These converters are environmentally robust and conduction-cooled, ensuring reliable performance in various operating conditions. They are capable of operating from either a nominal 28 V or 270 VDC input, making them versatile for different power source environments.

The product line offers standard VITA 62 output voltages ranging from 3.3 V to 12 V. In terms of power output, the 3U models are capable of delivering up to 600 W, while the 6U models can provide up to 1000 W. This range of power outputs makes these power supplies suitable for a wide array of applications within 3U and 6U OpenVPX systems. Users can request customized power supplies; these customizations can cater to different output voltages or power levels, enabling greater flexibility and tailoring to specific system requirements. The converters have been tested to meet military standards, including MIL-461F and MIL-704F; additionally, the 28 V input version also complies with MIL-1275E standards, which lays out operating voltage limits and transient voltage characteristics.

Vicor | https://www.vicorpower.com/ www.militaryembedded.com

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GUEST BLOG

Bringing data processing to the extraterrestrial edge

By Travis Steele, Red Hat When it comes to data processing and analysis, space is a final frontier that’s filled with challenges. Fortunately, military leaders have access to the technology and tools to make interstellar data processing a success, resulting in faster actionable insights – and a strategic and tactical advantage.

We often hear that the success of military missions is in part dependent upon the ability to garner information in nearreal time; in terms of space, that’s simply not happening fast enough. Until it is, the efficacy of using space-based resources for military use cases will be stunted.

Over the past few years, data processing has gotten further and further away from the traditional data center. Now, it’s going even farther still – to the reaches of outer space.

There is a solution, however: The use of microservices, coupled with an underlying open source substrate, can extend Earthbased cloud infrastructures and services to the outer limits of space, providing military leaders and scientists with the processing capabilities they need to successfully create powerful interstellar data centers.

NASA, for example, is using artificial intelligence (AI) to streamline data processing in space by automatically identifying and prioritizing information about events that are happening on Earth. The Space Development Agency (SDA) has developed a prototype on-orbit experimental testbed (POET) to process data onboard satellites used by the U.S. military to detect and track targets on the ground, at sea, or in the air.

These early examples of data processing at the far edge exemplify technology’s ability to provide government organizations with a tactical and strategic advantage over potential adversaries. However, these technological advances also present significant operational and IT challenges that must be addressed today if R&D at the orbital edge is to be successful.

The potential of extraterrestrial data processing is being held back The potential for data processing at the extraterrestrial edge is almost as vast as the universe in which it will take place. The possible use cases for the military are obvious. For example, a satellite can provide detailed images that can be immediately analyzed at the point of capture, with only some information needing to be processed on Earth, thereby providing actionable intelligence more quickly than the use of a traditional data center alone.

Beyond national security, data processing in space can also lead to discoveries that can impact medicine, climate, and more.

These insights can lead to advancements that can ultimately help scientists and the world at large.

Data processing in space will help lead to these advancements, but right now it’s hampered by physical and compute limitations. From a physical standpoint, most information must still be transmitted back to Earth for processing at ground-based stations and data centers. This transaction takes time, thanks to the distance the data must travel and the fact that it is being transmitted over low-bandwidth and high-latency networks.

After it’s processed, information must then be sent back to the satellite or space station–again, again consuming precious time and resources.

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Size, weight, and computing power for extraterrestrial data processing In addition to the time it takes for information to be relayed from orbit to the ground, the lack of onboard real estate limits the types of hardware that can be used to process and analyze data. This is a problem the military is very familiar with, having dealt with challenges of size, weight, and power (SWaP) when it comes to drones, edge devices, and so on. Space provides similar challenges, but with the addition of thermal demands.

Fortunately, many of the same technologies the military already uses for data processing at the edge can also be applied to space, including microservices. Since microservices architectures break up software applications into loosely coupled, smaller digital services, they can easily be deployed in all edge environments – even the extraterrestrial edge. The SWaP of the system they’re running on is less of an issue, as microservices use very little power and can run on small embedded devices.

Essentially, deploying microservices in orbit creates a constellation version of what has already been successfully deployed on Earth. Complex workloads and mission-critical systems can be run and optimized in a space station, or on a satellite – indeed, wherever the need arises. The information they uncover can be processed at the far edge.

Open source foundation critical for effective microservices management Having an underlying open source substrate supporting the microservices is critical, for a couple of reasons.

First, open source provides more interoperability allowing for easier modifications and updates to assets whenever necessary.

Proprietary systems can be difficult to manage on the ground, let alone in space, and making updates into a particular infrastructure can prove difficult, costly, and time-consuming.

Second, an expansive number of microservices require continuous management and orchestration. Existing ones are www.militaryembedded.com

frequently updated, new ones are often deployed, and organizations need an infrastructure that supports the ability to do all of these things without impediment. An open source platform is the ideal solution because it provides the flexibility to easily connect, manage, observe, and orchestrate microservices.

Laying the groundwork for extraterrestrial data processing Implementing the appropriate technology is not the only thing military leaders should be doing right now to prepare for data processing at the extraterrestrial edge. Laying the groundwork for this technological evolution will require a combination of strategic planning and private-sector partnerships.

On the planning front, defense organizations should begin defining their unique requirements and prioritizing their initiatives. As part of this, they may wish to establish governance and guidelines around their data processing activities. Working with consortia such as The National Consortium for Data Science may also be beneficial.

Finally, while adopting open source technologies like micro­ services and their underlying infrastructure, military organizations should take full advantage of the resources available to them in the open source development community. This community hosts numerous steering committees and working groups, as well as cooperative research opportunities that enable government agencies to work directly with developers to create optimal technologies for mission success.

In the case of data processing in space, those missions will take military leaders far beyond the terrestrial environment, which will make achieving the desired outcomes more challenging.

But if they do achieve them, it will advance their operational goals and maintain a strategic and tactical advantage over adversaries. Fortunately, the tools to reach their operational and intelligence objectives are available and within reach, just like the stars themselves. MES Travis Steele is Chief Architect within the global office of the CTO at Red Hat.

Government/private-sector collaborations can ignite innovation; government agencies have long seen the value in such partnerships, as evidenced by work that has been done by many organizations, including Red Hat and Lockheed Martin hosting NASA’s Artemis mission simulations.

Red Hat https://www.redhat.com/en

Solving Electronic Warfare & SIGINT Signal Acquisition and Latency Challenges Sponsored by Analog Devices, Annapolis MIcro Systems, and Mercury Modern electronic warfare (EW) and signals intelligence (SIGINT) systems are getting more complex as the threats they are designed to counter and detect grow in complexity.

In this webcast, industry experts will cover how RF signal analysis, Direct RF technology, signal-processing solutions, and other components can enable more sophisticated and responsive EW and SIGINT systems. (This is an archived event.)

Watch this webcast: http://tinyurl.com/4rv9mbh9

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CONNECTING WITH MIL EMBEDDED

By Editorial Staff

GIVING BACK | PODCAST | WHITE PAPER | BLOG | VIDEO | SOCIAL MEDIA | WEBCAST GIVING BACK Each issue, the editorial staff of Military Embedded Systems will highlight a different organization that benefits the military, veterans, and their families. We are honored to cover the technology that protects those who protect us every day.

This issue we are highlighting NextOp, a nonprofit organization that works individually with enlisted service members and recently discharged veterans to help translate military training and experiences into valued qualifications in the business community.

NextOp was founded in 2014 by a group of former military leaders and industry executives who sought to build a strong military talent pipeline to industries. Its founders identified a gap between enlisted military members and companies looking to hire military talent, as service members and veterans are a talented group that bring years of experience and leadership to the table.

NextOp identified as its goal to bridge that gap by connecting these talented individuals to existing career opportunities through one-on-one mentorship and leading them to understand how their training and experiences translate into valued qualifications in the workforce after their military commitment. Dedicated employment coordinators help the veterans with job hunting, resume writing, electronic applications, and adapting to life as a private citizen. The organization also attempts to identify candidates as early as one year before they leave the military, working directly with military bases and veteran organizations and partner programs. The employment coordinators also, say NextOp officials, follow up with placed candidates periodically to see how they’re doing in their new careers.

“These veterans have fantastic skills that can translate into a career,” said Patrick McManus, employment coordinator for NextOp. “They just need help seeing how their skill set translates, which is in more ways than they think, navigating the environment and communicating their skills in a way that makes sense to the civilian population.”

For additional information, visit https://nextopvets.org/.

WHITE PAPER

WEBCAST

Certifying Next Generation Avionics Software to DO-178C DAL-A

Direct GPU RDMA Recording using RoCE Ethernet Links

Sponsored by Afuzion and LDRA

By Critical I/O

Avionics systems are getting more and more complex: Emerging aircraft technologies such as electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL), urban air mobility (UAM), and uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs), including swarm capabilities, pose difficult safety-certification challenges for avionics manufacturers and integrators.

Graphics processing units (GPUs) are seeing greatly increased usage in military embedded applications. The GPU’s ability to process massive amounts of data offers great advantages in sensor and image processing, image feature extraction and recognition, and artificial intelligence (AI) applications. A challenge remains with GPU based systems, however: How to move large amounts of data efficiently into and out of the GPU-based processing system, often with multiple GPUs.

This webcast – featuring avionics safety-certification industry experts – will discuss methodologies for solving these challenges and introduce solutions to help engineers certify avionics software to RTCA DO-178C Design Assurance Level A (DAL A), achieve conformance to the Future Airborne Capability Environment (FACE) Technical Standard, and meet the security objectives of RTCA DO-326A and RTCA DO-356A. (This is an archived event.)

In this white paper, discover an approach to move data in and out of GPU memory over 25 Gb Ethernet links to/from NVMe storage, leveraging Critical I/O’s StoreEngine and StorePak 3U VPX modules as a data-recording and playback system. It also shows that the RoCE [RDMA over Commodity Ethernet] protocol can be used as a reliable transport in GPU applications, both for playback of a large data stream into a GPU processing pipeline as well as recording a similarly large data stream of GPU-processed results into the storage system.

Watch this webcast: http://tinyurl.com/42zy5wtv

Read this white paper: http://tinyurl.com/wsf2s2je

Watch more webcasts: https://militaryembedded.com/webcasts/archive/

Read more white papers: https://militaryembedded.com/whitepapers

46 January/February 2024

MILITARY EMBEDDED SYSTEMS

www.militaryembedded.com

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TECHNOLOGY, TRENDS, AND PRODUCTS DRIVING THE DESIGN PROCESS Military Embedded Systems focuses on embedded electronics – hardware and software – for military applications through technical coverage of all parts of the design process. The website, Resource Guide, e-mags, newsletters, podcasts, webcasts, and print editions provide insight on embedded tools and strategies including technology insertion, obsolescence management, standards adoption, and many other military-specific technical subjects.

Coverage areas include the latest innovative products, technology, and market trends driving military embedded applications such as radar, electronic warfare, unmanned systems, cybersecurity, AI and machine learning, avionics, and more. Each issue is full of the information readers need to stay connected to the pulse of embedded militaryembedded.com technology in the military and aerospace industries.