SOSA Special Edition 2021

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Interview with Dr. Ilya Lipkin, Steering Committee chair for SOSA

EDITOR’S PERSPECTIVE

SOSA Special Edition (ver. 1.0)

10

en ar hite ture initiati es bolster unmanned sensors and systems

22

SOSA Membership List

SOSA and VITA: Working together for next-gen defense systems

Open architecture initiatives bolster unmanned sensors and systems

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30

Simplifying the integration of Assured PNT with CMOSS/SOSA aligned solutions

Chassis managers: Monitoring chassis health in open architecture systems

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By Gary Hanson, Elma Electronic p.30

ON THE COVER

38

Versatility is key as OpenVPX enclosure requirements continue to evolve

42

ShortVPX, small form factors, and SOSA Interview with Jay Grandin, vice president of product development at Annapolis Micro Systems

SOSA Consortium Information SOSA SPEAKOUTS AND PROFILES

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SOSA Speakouts

enviroink.indd 1 10/1/08 10:44:38 AM 4 | SOSA Special Edition 2021 www.opengroup.org/sosa

An integrative and inclusive standard to accelerate the development of affordable, agile, and composable sensor systems.

The SOSA™ Consortium empowers government and industry to collaboratively develop open standards and best practices.

The SOSA️ Technical Standard leverages and complements open standards in government and industry. It defines architectural modules (containing functions and behaviors) with defined open interfaces, enabling the development of capabilities made up of common components. The standard incorporates specifications for software components and hardware elements, as well as electrical and mechanical interfaces composing the SOSA️ sensor element.

For more information and to obtain the SOSA️ Technical Standard email: ogsosa-admin@opengroup.us

Join The SOSA Consortium Today

We support the warfighters and soldiers in the field and strive to arm them with the electronic tools they need for mission success. Industry, government, and suppliers are successfully joining their unique perspectives to leverage technology and standards in support of the warfighters and soldiers in the field.

https://opengroup.org/sosa/join

The Open Group: Leading the development of open, vendor-neutral technology standards and certifications

The Open Group is a global consortium that enables the achievement of business objectives through technology standards. Our diverse membership of more than 840 organizations includes customers, systems and solutions suppliers, tool vendors, integrators, academics, and consultants across multiple industries.

Gold Sponsors

PG

SPONSOR

28 Abaco Systems – Build your next system with the 6U VPX leader

75 Abaco Systems – Build your next system with the 3U & 6U VPX leader

2 Annapolis Micro Systems –

The only full ecosystem of 3U & 6U 100 Gb Ethernet SOSA aligned products

50 Annapolis Micro Systems –Executive Speakout

3 Curtiss-Wright – A trusted, proven leader in open standards

51 Curtiss-Wright – Executive Speakout

15 Elma Electronic – Leaders in open standards. Enabling the warfighter with OpenVPX

51 Elma Electronic – Executive Speakout

33 Epiq Solutions –

Dominate the RF spectrum

52 Epiq Solutions – Executive Speakout

49 Kontron – Rugged SOSA aligned VPX processor and switch blades

52 Kontron – Executive Speakout

54 Pentek, now part of Mercury –Executive Speakout

76 Pentek, now part of Mercury –

The next big thing in RFSoC is here. (And it’s only 2.5 inches wide!)

29 Wolf Advanced Technology –Supercomputing at the extreme edge

55 Wolf Advanced Technology –Executive Speakout

Advertiser Index

PG

ADVERTISER

50 ADLINK Technology Inc. –Executive Speakout 7 Behlman Electronics, Inc. –Behlman leads the pack again! 20

LCR Embedded Systems, Inc. –VPX packaging for mission critical performance 53 LCR Embedded Systems, Inc. –Executive Speakout

8 Mercury Systems, Inc. –

The speed of Mercury: Trusted. Secure. Open. Pick Three. 53 Milpower Source –Executive Speakout 45 North Atlantic Industries –COSA supports MOSA targeting SOSA alignment 19 Samtec – SOSA aligned FPGA expansion I/O interconnect

36

Smart EC (Smart Embedded Computing) – Supporting open standards for military applications for 40 years.

54 Smart EC (Smart Embedded Computing) – Executive Speakout

41

Spectranetix – Pacific Defense builds advanced, upgradeable and affordable CMOSS and SOSA multi-domain solutions designed to be adaptive and rapidly deployable

55 Spectranetix – Executive Speakout

5 The Open Group – The SOSA Consortium empowers government and industry to collaboratively develop open standards and best practices.

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REPRINTS

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Editor’s Perspective

By John McHale, Editorial Director

SOSA Special Edition (ver. 1.0)

Welcome to the SOSA Special Edition, which marks the release of The Open Group’s Sensor Open Systems Architecture (SOSA) Technical Standard 1.0. This maga ine is the first of what will be an annual issue, highlighting content on SOSA from Military Embedded Systems magazine and the SOSA Consortium, as well as the products aligned and conformant to the Technical Standard..

As I write this on the eve of the Technical Standard’s first release, think back to when first heard about the SOSA initiative. I was among the crowd gathered at the 2017 Embedded Tech Trends (ETT) conference in New Orleans. Charles Patrick Collier, SOSA Consortium cofounder – and at that time the Technical Lead with the Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) – briefed those gathered on SOSA. Many in the audience thought or grumbled “here we go with another standard initiative that will not garner support across the services and will just fade away or become proprietary to one application.

I disagreed. My sense was that economics were going to force the government’s and then industry’s hand. Collier illustrated that point with his most striking slide that day, showing how the astronomical expense of military platforms, with the Joint Strike Fighter being at the apex with its nine million lines of code and 17 years of development. Anything beyond that is simply unaffordable, he said.

At that time, I wrote that I hoped the Department of Defense (DoD), three services, primes, and COTS suppliers actually do “work together, mostly due to the fact that they really have no choice. Doing things the old way with legacy and proprietary systems, with the government funding technology development from

the ground up or paying more money for proprietary technology based on closed architectures, is unfair to the taxpayer and the warfighter and ust plain economically unsound.

Four years later, that hope is now belief. The member roster not only includes the three services, but also prime contractors like Raytheon, traditional COTS suppliers like Elma Electronic and Mercury Systems, other standards organizations like VITA, academia like Georgia Tech Research Institute, as well as commercial chip providers Intel and NVIDIA. Its momentum is real, as is its impact.

Getting to the table is ust a first step after that it’s about collaboration. “The SOSA Consortium is pulling together key defense departments to agree on common open standards, something that has been lacking in the movement to implementing open standards, says Jerry Gipper, executive director of the V TA organi ation. t is difficult and challenging, but the SOSA Steering Committee has done a great job of pulling everything together and keeping on point. This is key to the community in that it keeps the ecosystem focused on achievable solutions for military electronics.

The most important collaboration is that between the three services – the Air Force, Army, and Navy, who announced a pact in January 2019 in what is now known as the Tri-Service Memo. It declared that “Modular Open Systems Approaches for our weapon systems is a warfighting imperative. Signed by the secretary of each service, it stated that “development of a modular open systems approach (MOSA) in areas where we lack them is vital to our success. The memo mentioned SOSA, FACE, and other standards by name as examples of OSA.

What’s critical to SOSA’s success is that the standard was not created from scratch. It’s based on other standards like the Future Airborne Capability Environment (FACE), also managed by The Open Group, the others in the memo, and OpenVPX, which was developed within VITA.

VITA has been developing open standards for four decades and we at OpenSystems Media have been covering them for ust as long. Our first publication was VMEbus Magazine, launched nearly four decades ago and still published today as VITA Technologies, which we produce with Jerry Gipper and VITA.

Whether SOSA has the staying power of VMEbus remains to be seen. Whatever the standard or challenge, however, we know that a spirit of shared enthusiasm is needed for long-term success. SOSA Chair Dr. Ilya Lipkin told me that standards groups succeed or fail based on the enthusiasm of their volunteers. For more from Dr. Lipkin, see the interview with him on page 12.

If the enthusiasm behind the SOSA’s development and behind the participation in the following pages is any indication, the SOSA Technical Standard will be around for quite a while.

Speaking of enthusiasm, none have more than those who helped our team bring you the SOSA Special Edition: Reggie Hammond and her colleagues at The Open Group, as well as the SOSA Outreach Committee cochairs – Valerie Andrew of Elma Electronic and Gina Peter of Pentek, now a part of Mercury Systems. Much thanks for your help on the first edition and congratulations to the SOSA Consortium on the release of the standard.

About the SOSA TM Consortium

www.opengroup.org/sosa

The Open Group Sensor Open System Architecture (SOSA) Consortium enables government and industry to collaboratively develop open standards and best practices to enable, enhance, and accelerate the deployment of affordable, capable, and interoperable sensor systems. The SOSA Consortium is creating open system reference architectures applicable to military and commercial sensor systems and a business model that balances stakeholder interests. The architectures employ modular design and use widely supported, consensus-based, nonproprietary standards for key interfaces.

For additional information please visit https://www.opengroup.org/sosa.

SOSA SPONSOR

Air Force Life Cycle Management Center https://www.aflcmc.af.mil/ Boeing https://www.boeing.com/ Collins Aerospace https://www.rockwellcollins.com/

Joint Tactical Networking Center https://www.jtnc.mil/ Lockheed Martin https://www.lockheedmartin.com/

NAVAIR (Naval Air Systems Command) https://www.navair.navy.mil/

US Army CCDC C5ISR Center https://c5isr.ccdc.army.mil/ US Army PEO Aviation https://www.army.mil/PEOAviation

US Army Project Manager Electronic Warfare and Cyber https://peoiews.army.mil/

US Space Force Space and Missile Systems Center https://www.losangeles.spaceforce.mil/

SOSA PRINCIPAL

Advantech Corporation https://www.advantech.com/

BAE Systems Inc https://www.baesystems.com/en/home

Booz Allen Hamilton https://www.boozallen.com/ Cubic https://www.cubic.com/ Elbit Systems of America https://www.elbitsystems-us.com/

FLIR Systems https://www.flir.com/

GE Aviation Systems

https://www.geaviation.com/

General Dynamics Mission Systems https://gdmissionsystems.com/ Huber+Suhner Astrolab https://www.hubersuhner.com/en Intel Corporation https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ homepage.html

L3Harris https://www.l3harris.com/ Mercury Systems https://www.mrcy.com/ Northrop Grumman Corporation https://www.northropgrumman.com/ Raytheon Technologies https://www.rtx.com/ Sierra Nevada Corporation https://www.sncorp.com/ SRC, Inc. https://www.srcinc.com/ VadaTech https://www.vadatech.com/

SOSA ASSOCIATE

Abaco Systems https://www.abaco.com/ Acromag, Inc. https://www.acromag.com/

Aegis Power Systems https://aegispower.com/ AirBorn, Inc. https://www.airborn.com/

Aitech Defense Systems, Inc https://aitechsystems.com/ Amphenol https://www.amphenol.com/

Ampro ADLINK Technology, Inc https://www.adlinktech.com/en/Index

Anduril Industries https://www.anduril.com/ Annapolis Micro Systems Inc. https://www.annapmicro.com/ AREA-I, Inc. https://areai.com/ Ascendant Engineering Solutions LLC https://aesaustin.com/ Atrenne https://www.atrenne.com/ Ball Aerospace https://www.ball.com/aerospace

Behlman Electronics https://www.behlman.com/ CACI https://www.caci.com/ CAES https://caes.com/ Chameleon Consulting Group https://chameleoncg.com/ CodeMettle https://codemettle.com/ Comtel Electronics https://comtel-online.com/

Concurrent Technologies Inc. https://www.ctc.com/ CoreAVI https://coreavi.com/ COTSWORKS, LLC https://cotsworks.com/ Critical Frequency Design http://www.criticalfrequency.com/ Crossfield Technology https://www.crossfieldtech.com/

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

Dawn VME Products https://www.dawnvme.com/

Delta Information Systems https://www.delta-info.com/ Digital Receiver Technology https://www.drti.com/ DornerWorks https://dornerworks.com/

DRS Signal Solutions https://www.leonardodrs.com/what-we-do/ products-and-services/signal-solutions/

EIZO Rugged Solutions https://www.eizorugged.com/ Elma https://www.elma.com/en ENSCO Avionics https://www.ensco.com/ Epiq Solutions https://epiqsolutions.com/ FEI-ELCOM TECH, Inc https://fei-elcomtech.com/ FiberQA https://www.fiberqa.com/ Freedom Power Systems http://www.vicorpower.com/ Georgia Tech Research Institute https://gtri.gatech.edu/

Herrick Technology Laboratories, Inc. https://www.herricktechlabs.com/

IDEAS Engineering & Technology https://www.ideas-tek.com/ iRF Solutions http://irf-solutions.com/ ITZ LLC https://itz.org/ Jacobs https://www.jacobs.com/

Jovian Software Consulting https://www.joviansc.com/ Kontron America https://www.kontron.com/en LCR Embedded Systems, Inc. www.lcrembeddedsystems.com/

Lead Dog Technologies https://leaddog.tech/ Leidos https://www.leidos.com/

Leonardo Electronics https://www.leonardo.us/ Meritec

https://meritec.com/ Micro Focus (USA) Inc. https://www.microfocus.com/en-us/home Micropac Industries, Inc. https://www.micropac.com/

Midwest Microwave Solutions https://www.mms-rf.com/ Milpower Source https://milpower.com/

Motorola Solutions Inc. https://www.motorolasolutions.com/ en_us.html

New Wave DV https://newwavedv.com/

North Atlantic Industries, Inc https://www.naii.com/ NVIDIA https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/

Orion Technologies, LLC http://www.oriontechnologies.com/

Orolia Defense & Security https://www.oroliads.com/ PacStar https://pacstar.com/

Parry Labs, LLC https://parrylabs.com/ Pentek, now part of Mercury https://www.pentek.com/ Perspecta Labs, Inc. www.perspectalabs.com

Pixus Technologies https://pixustechnologies.com/

QRC Technologies https://www.qrctech.com/

RADA Technologies https://radausa.com/

Radiall USA, Inc. https://www.radiall.com/ Rantec https://www.rantec.com

Real-Time Innovations, Inc. https://www.rti.com/en/

Red Rock Technologies https://www.redrocktech.com/

Reflex Photonics Corp. https://reflexphotonics.com/ Riverside Research https://www.riversideresearch.org/

RTD Embedded Technologies, Inc. https://www.rtd.com/ Saab, Inc. https://www.saab.com/ Samtec, Inc. https://www.samtec.com/ Sciens Innovations https://www.sciensinnovations.com/ ScioTeq https://www.scioteq.com/en Sealevel Systems https://www.sealevel.com/ Skayl LLC https://www.skayl.com/ Southwest Research Institute https://www.swri.org/ Spectranetix, Inc https://www.spectranetix.com/ Spirent Federal Systems https://spirentfederal.com/ SR Technologies https://www.srtgrp.com/ StreamDSP, LLC https://streamdsp.com/ SV Microwave https://www.svmicrowave.com/ TE Connectivity Corporation https://www.te.com/usa-en/home.html Technology Service Corporation https://www.tsc.com/ Tektronix https://www.tek.com/ Telephonics https://www.telephonics.com/ Tomahawk Robotics https://www.tomahawkrobotics.com/

Tucson Embedded Systems, Inc. https://www.tucsonembedded.com/ University of Dayton Research Institute https://udayton.edu/udri/ VITA https://www.vita.com/ W.L. Gore & Associates https://www.gore.com/ Wolf Advanced Technology https://wolfadvancedtechnology.com/

SOSA interview with Dr. Ilya Lipkin

Below are excerpts from an interview conducted with Dr. Ilya Lipkin, Chair of the SOSA Steering Committee, on how the Sensor Open Architecture (SOSA) Consortium was formed, how it embraces current standards, and what to expect from the 1.0 release. To read it in full, visit https://www.opengroup.org/ilyainterview/sosa.

What is your role in the SOSA Consortium?

LIPKIN: y role is very simple started Sensor Open Systems Architecture SOSA initiative and am the elected chair of The Open Group SOSA Consortium Steering Committee. The Air Force Life Cycle Management Center (AFLCMC) was interested in promoting an open architecture for U.S. Air Force (USAF) sensors, so we approached a number of industry partners. Initial industry feedback wasn’t enthusiastic because of the relatively small market for USAF sensors. Consequently, we proposed a compromise wherein we would get the other military services to participate, in order to build a meaningful open architecture sensor market. We modeled the SOSA Consortium after the existing Future Airborne Capability Environment (FACE) Consortium, which featured what we saw as an appropriate approach for addressing our open architecture challenge.

Early on, John Bowling was the USAF member of the FACE Consortium. At one point, I attended a FACE Technical Interchange Meeting (TIM) in Dayton, Ohio. As I gained familiarity with the FACE approach, oined FA onsortium to learn about and participate in the evolution of that set of standards.

The initial concept for SOSA came from Gibbs Dickson, who ran the AFLCMC/WING Sensors Directorate branch and Dick Sorenson, who was a chief engineer for AFLCMC/WING. The challenge was to secure maximum participation and buy-in. When we looked at existing business models, the FA onsortium seemed like the most logical fit. We refined the model based on input from several key players, including John Bowling (Air Force), Dr. Steve Davidson (Raytheon), Dr. Michael Moore (SWRI), Charles Patrick Collier (AFRL), Ben Peddicord (Army), and Robert Matthews (Navy), and OGA [other government agency] partners, at the initial meeting at [Patuxent] River hosted by NAVAIR.

One of the attractive aspects of the Consortium model is that it is a sustainable approach with a relatively low initial cost. A primary goal was to access a large industry support base the other consideration was to minimize initial government start-up costs. An alternative approach we explored

Dr. Ilya Lipkin

was the OMS-UCI (Open Mission Systems/Universal Command & Control Interface) model, basically a government-sponsored collaborative working group where the government contracts with a number of companies to design the standard. The FACE approach allowed government investment to multiply funding available while giving us broad access to industry talent, from both large and small companies.

In spite of its cost advantage, the FACE approach proved more challenging from the perspective of gaining government approval, because it meant giving up a degree of control in exchange for buy-in and strong influence into the commercial OTS [commercial off-the-shelf] marketplace. The SOSA model prioritizes inclusiveness. We encourage small businesses and academia to participate and contribute, which strengthens the technical standard. Also, the crowdsourcing enables us to innovate faster because our members have more access to the latest and greatest technologies. Finally, the onsortium creates a level playing field for industry because it doesn’t favor the largest players.

SOSA is the first standard to be based on Model Based System Engineering (MBSE). What are the benefits of that approach?

You’ve stated that one of the goals of SOSA was to use existing standards, andonly develop new ones when absolutely necessary. Has that proven to be the case?

LIPKIN: Yes and no. In retrospect, there have been positives and negatives to that strategy. The most significant positive is that by leveraging mature existing standards you uickly benefit from years of design and development experience. On the other hand, you also inherit the concerns and limitations (technical and political) associated with those standards. t’s been incredibly difficult to gain consensus allowing one organizations open standard to become part of the SOSA Technical Standard. At the same time, it’s incredibly rewarding because once a standard is accepted, we benefit from five, or even years of investment and engineering as it becomes part of the SOSA technical baseline.

We also en oy a uni ue situation with SOSA in that V TA an existing standards body oined as a member of the onsortium. That may represent a first for a collaborative standards organization: It enables VITA to extend, modify, and feed back into [its] own effort.

To go faster and be more agile, you have to build on others’ work and stand on their shoulders. That’s one of the lessons from research: Don’t start from scratch. Start with a solid foundation, then modify, adapt, and add to it. The add to it piece is usually based on what’s already there. Are we also doing new stuff? Yes, for example, in smallform-factor sensors. For SOSA, we started with VNX or PC104 and either diverge or converge, depending on where the working group takes us. The result is based partly on somebody else’s experience but is also partly brand-new.

LIPKIN: The Air Force has a campaign to adopt digital engineering as a way to effectively address emerging and future challenges. One of the things I recognized and invested in from the very beginning is the need for SOSA to have a modern tool foundation. At the moment, SOSA Snapshot 3 and v1.0 are captured in Word documents. In parallel, we are constructing a digital model that can auto-generate the technical parameters, interface designs, and functional relationships in the SOSA Technical Standard, using the Sparx Enterprise Architect modeling tool. The reason for that is simple: SOSA is very complex, and to manage that complexity you must have tools that can support it. I envision that v2.0 will be captured in an Enterprise Architect or Cameo Systems model that will become the authoritative engineering source for the SOSA Technical Standard, and even autogenerate consistent sensor shall statements for capability acquisition.

Are there any other firsts that the SOSA Consortium is establishing?

LIPKIN: Yes. Recently, Intel Corporation joined the Consortium. Why would the addition of one company represent a singular success when we already enjoy contributions from so many companies including large prime integrators? The reason is that SOSA becomes the first technical standard to produce a vertically integrated product specification. Intel produces silicon – that is, microprocessors. Curtiss-Wright, Mercury, Kontron and Abaco build cards using that silicon. Those cards are sold directly to the primes, or to third-tier suppliers such as Leonardo DRS, HTL, or Spectranetix, whose components are ultimately sold to the primes for integration into the sensor system. Ultimately, the primes produce fully integrated sensor systems for the government.

SOSA is the only technical standard I’m aware of that has participants representing an entire product life cycle sit next to each other discussing how sensor systems will be deployed, employed, and sustained.

What do you see as the most important benefits that the SOSA Technical Standard will bring to the warfighter?

LIPKIN: One important benefit is that we have a venue for the Air Force, Army, avy, and OGAs to collaborate on sensor systems. In the sensor business, everyone has a silo of excellence, and we’ve built firewalls of protection around those silos. SOSA has created a soda straw between those silos for people to peer across and say, “Look, we’re doing the same thing as other end-user and prime activities n doing so, we’ve encouraged convergence of phenomenologies and end users addressing the same requirements. It’s not so much about paying several times for the same product (we do that all the time , it’s about investment efficiency how can uickly modify an existing product to make it meet new requirements? That’s the biggest thing that we’ve done, opening up new lines of cross-program communication. Basically, in order to innovate faster, we have to communicate faster.

Think of it this way: If you develop a fancy component that can process a lot of data quickly on an aircraft, wouldn’t you want others to discover and use that component? Today, that doesn’t happen very effectively because of the independent silos of excellence. Basing sensor components, modules and systems on a common technical standard helps speed discovery and re-use, and significantly advances interoperability.

The initial vision was for SOSA to be an Air Force open standard for sensors. Ultimately that wasn’t viable, so the vision expanded to become an open standard for the DoD [Department of Defense]. I would say that’s the biggest change. While the Air Force initially developed the concept, subsequently Army, Navy, and other customers also provided support, helping to make SOSA a true DoD effort. In terms of leaders, both Ben Peddicord and Jason Dirner have dedicated an enormous number of hours to help SOSA be successful. Ditto for Mike Hackert and Tyler Robinson (Mike’s replacement from the avy. SOSA is not ust an Air Force standard, but one of the first truly joint standards. And while we continue to reduce the barriers for industry stakeholders to talk to the DoD, ironically we’ve also reduced barriers for productive conversation across the military services.

What do you see as the greatest challenges/opportunities for broadening acceptance and use of the SOSA Technical Standard once it’s finalized?

LIPKIN: I think it’s already accepted! There are more contracts lined up than we know what to do with. The next challenge is maintaining and maturing the standard. Version . is not going to be mature in all respects. The hardware specification will have a high maturity level, the software specs not so much. There are still missing pieces that need to be developed for v2.0. I’m not worried about buy-in, product lines, or customers based on what we’re seeing. There are many DoD programs now that want to use SOSA. Our challenge is not to disappoint them!

We do need to keep SOSA from trying to specify , different hardware profiles. SOSA has primary and secondary hardware profiles, and there’s been constant debate over which profile should be primary. We use the two-option approach because it allows for a primary hardware profile to provide greater interoperability, with a secondary profile that enables perhaps greater performance. The key promise of SOSA is interoperability. So anything that limits interoperability is a problem. As SOSA gains momentum, managing good-idea theories becomes harder and harder everybody brings a unique use case. Proving whether an idea should become part of the standard or should be a one-off is becoming more of a challenge. At the end

of the day, interoperability is the key to how we win. We need to avoid having edge cases dilute effectiveness. If a proposed use case resonates with a large customer base, it deserves to be part of the standard. With that said, SOSA does accommodate components with custom profiles to be used in the same box with standard components, but you can’t label the custom items as SOSA.

What is the biggest misconception about SOSA?

LIPKIN: The biggest misconception people have may be that SOSA is a hardware-only standard. In fact, we have a lot of software specifications. Another misconception is that the SOSA Technical Standard is developing slowly. We are not slow. Considering the complexity of a fully realized SOSA sensor system, the volume of technical content we’ve created in four years is huge. It could easily have taken 15 years to develop that much content. The Consortium model and consensus approach has proven to be uite efficient.

Are you pleased with the progress made so far?

LIPKIN: I am extremely excited to see the large volume of work we’ve completed. We’re especially pleased that industry has come along to share the risk with the government by helping to develop a standard that will benefit us all in the long term. ■

Dr. Ilya Lipkin is the founder of The Open Group Sensor Open Systems Architecture (SOSA) initiative and is the elected chair of The Open Group SOSA Consortium Steering Committee.

ONE IMPORTANT BENEFIT IS THAT WE HAVE A VENUE FOR THE AIR FORCE, ARMY, NAVY, AND OGAS TO COLLABORATE ON SENSOR SYSTEMS.

SOSA and VITA: Working together for next-gen defense systems

By Rodger Hosking

The

Group

Open Systems

Consortium is developing common open standards for designing, building, and deploying hardware, software, and firmware components of new military electronic systems. Contributing members to SOSA include the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) –including the Army, Navy, and Air Force – along with key representatives from industry and universities.

The Sensor Open Systems Architecture (SOSA) Consortium adopts the most appropriate subsets of existing open standards to form a multipurpose backbone of building blocks for current and future embedded systems for radar, electro-optical/infrared (EO/IR), signals intelligence (SIGINT), electronic warfare (EW), and communications. Its objectives include vendor interoperability, lower procurement costs, easier technology upgrades, quicker reaction to new requirements, and longer life cycles.

Because the emerging SOSA hardware standard draws primarily from OpenVPX and other related VITA standards, the new technologies, topologies,

and environmental requirements critical to meeting SOSA objectives must be supported by extensions to these VITA standards.

Let’s examine the VITA and SOSA organizations and how they interact, along with the challenges, successful strategies, and illustrative examples.

VITA background and mission

Introduced to the market in 1981, the VMEbus architecture began gaining market presence with specification development and products from otorola and other early vendors, who formed the VMEbus Manufacturers Group (now VITA) in 1983.

In 1985, VITA (VMEbus International Trade Association) was founded to promote V bus in worldwide markets. V TA published its first directory of vendor companies and over 2,700 product families at that time. VMEbus soon won widespread acceptance and adoption by defense, government, research, and industrial customers.

The VITA Technical Committee, formed in 1987 to develop dozens of new extensions to VMEbus, evolved in 1994 into the VITA Standards Organization (VSO). A year

Open

SOSA (Sensor

Architecture)

earlier, VITA had become an accredited standards development organization with the American National Standards Institute (ANSI).

To overcome the known performance limitations of the parallel bus backplane of VMEbus, in 2003 VITA introduced the VITA 46 VPX standard to take advantage of new gigabit serial interconnect technology for 3U and 6U boards. In 2010, after widespread use, refinements, and serious interest in VPX for long-term defense programs, VITA announced the V TA OpenVPX system specification, which was uickly ratified by A S .

VITA continues its strong role in promoting and developing open architecture embedded system standards, actively supporting numerous working groups in their standards development efforts, and working with vendors and other organizations to embrace new technology and meet new market requirements.

Open Systems Architecture directive and initiatives

In May 2013, the U.S. Under Secretary of Defense issued a milestone memo mandating that all acquisition activity must incorporate the Department of Defense (DoD) Open Systems Architecture (OSA) principles and practices. These principles include using existing or evolving open standards for well-defined modular hardware and software components that can be sourced from multiple vendors. Once proven, hardware platforms should be reusable for quick-reaction mission needs, feature upgrades, and new technology insertion. Software architectures must be layered and extensible to permit operating system and security upgrades, and to accommodate new applications and user interfaces. These advantages reduce development risks and help ensure significantly longer operational life cycles.

In response, each of the three primary U.S. service branches (Army, Navy, and Air Force) began developing standards that embraced OSA principles to meet future procurement needs of deployed systems for their respective services.

SOFTWARE ARCHITECTURES MUST BE LAYERED AND EXTENSIBLE TO PERMIT OPERATING SYSTEM AND SECURITY UPGRADES, AND TO ACCOMMODATE NEW APPLICATIONS AND USER INTERFACES. THESE ADVANTAGES REDUCE DEVELOPMENT RISKS AND HELP ENSURE SIGNIFICANTLY LONGER OPERATIONAL LIFE CYCLES.

The Army’s CCDC [Combat Capabilities Development Command] in Aberdeen, Maryland, developed CMOSS [C4ISR/EW Modular Open Suite of Standards]. These standards included OpenVPX for hardware, VICTORY [Vehicular Integration for C4ISR/EW Interoperability] to share vehicle services (like time and position) for C4ISR/EW interoperability, and MORA [Modular Open RF Architecture] to share antennas and amplifiers. t also uses AW and S A Software ommunications Architecture] frameworks.

The Navy’s NAVAIR [Naval Air Systems Command] in Patuxent River, Maryland, created HOST [Hardware Open Systems Technology], which initially focused on embedded processing for airborne and ground-vehicle missions. Its major goal of abstracting hardware and software components aligned well with OSA concepts. HOST hardware definitions include three tiers Tier defines the deployed platform airframe, vehicle, UAV, etc. , Tier defines the embedded system enclosure, and Tier the boards, backplanes, modules, and faceplates. Tiers 2 and 3 are subsets of OpenVPX modules and profiles. A registry of Tier products offers an approved catalog of components for sharing across programs.

The Air Force’s OMS [Open Mission Systems] initiative incorporates SOA [Service Oriented Architecture] for commercially developed concepts and middleware, and UCI [Universal Command and Control Interface], which standardizes messages and middleware for sharing command and control mission information between airborne system elements. OMS solidly embraced FACE [Future Airborne Capability Environment], a consortium of The Open Group that adopts open software standards for avionics systems, which gained full support of all three of the armed services.

SOSA Consortium

While each service made significant progress in advancing OSA principles, they did so through different initiatives that often shared common open standards, including OpenVPX and FA . owever, each initiative also included specific mandates tailored for service-specific platform re uirements.

After recognizing these facts, administrators within DoD and each of the services perceived a strong need to promote a single, common initiative to define ac uisition activities across all three services.

In early 2017, the DoD issued a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) solicitation for Sensor Open System Architecture Architectural Research outlining the numerous OSA initiatives and ob ectives for a unified solution. This resulted in the formation of the SOSA Consortium managed under The Open Group, a large organization with strict and well-defined practices, policies, and procedures for standards development efforts. (Figure 1.)

A primary mandate of the SOSA Consortium is broad participation, commitment, and contribution from the U.S. DoD – including the Army, Navy, and Air Force – as well as industry, academia, and other government organizations. Major objectives include development and adoption of open systems architecture standards for C4ISR to provide a common, multi-purpose backbone for radar, EO/IR, SIGINT, EW and countermeasure systems. Additional objectives include platform affordability rapid fielding reconfigurability new technology insertion extended life cycles and repurposing of hardware, firmware, and software.

Inside the SOSA Consortium

The SOSA Consortium structure consists of two primary groups. The Business Working Group WG defines business and acquisition practices and creates guidance for acquisition programs. The Technical Working Group (TWG) is responsible for defining the SOSA Architecture and producing the SOSA Technical Standard and SOSA Reference Design.

The SOSA Architecture presents a modular system structure, with tight integration within modules for encapsulating functionality and behaviors, plus welldefined interfaces. These modules must be based on open, published standards, with consensus-based influence stakeholders directing the evolution, and a

FIGURE 1 | After independently developing standards in response to DoD MOSA objectives, each of the three services joined the SOSA Consortium to develop a unified standard.

strict conformance validation process. The SOSA Architecture protects IP [intellectual property] within the modules to incentivize innovation and competition.

The SOSA Technical Standard documents the SOSA Architecture with detailed rules and requirements drawn and adapted from a collection of open standards. The primary standards defining specifications for plug-in cards, backplanes, chassis, electrical components, and mechanical structures are actualy VITA standards.

The SOSA onformance Policy, now being defined by the SOSA onformance Standing ommittee, will define processes for ualifying products against the Technical Standard. These include multiple-conformance verification processes, a single-conformance certification process, and a single SOSA certified-conformant product registration process. Until the award of certification, no product can claim to be SOSA conformant.

Membership in the SOSA Consortium is currently restricted to U.S. citizens and organi ations, so that o -sensitive or classified re uirements can be presented by representatives from the armed services to promote solution strategies within the SOSA Technical Standard. For this reason, technical details of ongoing discussions in the SOSA Technical Working Group may not be disclosed to the public. Once the standard is approved and released to the public, it will contain only specifications and rules, free from the underlying, sensitive use drivers.

VITA

and SOSA Consortium

ecause V TA is so central to the SOSA onsortium hardware definition, many of the same individuals in the SOSA Consortium TWG are also active participants in the VITA standard development efforts. Because restrictions on technical disclosures imposed on the TWG by the SOSA Consortium do not apply to VITA efforts, members of VITA must be mindful against referencing ongoing SOSA Consortium technical topics in their VITA discussions and publications.

evertheless, the TWG did release periodic snapshots of the evolving SOSA Technical Standard that are publicly available for review, including Snapshot 3 released in uly . While no conformance to these snapshots may be claimed, they illustrate the direction and underlying principles guiding the final standard.

VPX Packaging for Mission Critical Performance

Advanced

thermal management designs that tackle the most demanding

most demanding requirements

Recognized for their rugged reliability, LCR products include ATR and custom chassis in conduction cooled and air or liquid hybrid conduction configurations for SOSA aligned and VPX payload boards. Work with our experienced and engaging engineering team to help ensure mission success with chassis and integrated systems that meet your specific performance goals.

FIGURE 2 | Rear view of 3U OpenVPX Module with two VITA 67.3D backplane connectors, each with 10 coaxial RF signals and 24 optical lanes. Courtesy TE Connectivity.

In some cases, the SOSA Consortium adopts only carefully selected subsets of existing V TA specifications. For example, the TWG adopted only a handful of the more than U and U OpenVPX slot and module profiles, based on an analysis that they could accommodate the majority of system requirements.

User-defined backplane pins defined in OpenVPX pose a conundrum for standardi ation efforts because they allow custom assignment of signals with interface standards, directions, and voltages. Profiles with user-defined pins are discouraged in SOSA onsortium standards. nstead, work is underway to assign a minimum set of specific O standards to each group of legacy user-defined pins for each of the OpenVPX control, data, and expansion planes.

SOSA Technical Standards restrict the primary VPX power supplies to +12V only, prohibiting V and . V. This restriction greatly simplifies the previous OpenVPX issue of balancing among three voltages to simplify chassis power supplies and standardize the plug-in cards.

Unlike most OpenVPX systems, the SOSA Architecture requires hardware platform management leveraging the HOST 3.0 system management architecture, which itself is highly leveraged from VITA 46.11. A system manager module accesses all SOSA Architecture system elements for census-taking, health monitoring, trouble shooting, new firmware software upgrades, and reset recovery operations.

ackplane O for F signals and optical interfaces in OpenVPX have gained significant traction in CMOSS, MORA, and HOST systems over the last six years, all enabled by V TA and V TA specifications. liminating front-panel cable harnesses wins high scores for maintenance and reliability. Some of the latest modular backplane standards offer extremely high density and even mixed RF/optical interfaces as shown in Figure 2.

In summary, when critical needs arise from SOSA Consortium customers (DoD services), SOSA TWG members can promote innovation for new standards within VITA to accommodate them, while still complying with SOSA Architecture restrictions.

Next steps

The release of the SOSA Technical Standard 1.0 is expected on September 30, 2021.

In the face of the current public health crisis, web-based conferencing has replaced many face-to-face meetings with regular ongoing conference calls to help maintain the momentum.

Before the release of the Technical Standard, vendors offered products “developed in alignment with SOSA like the one in Figure . After the release of the SOSA Technical Standard . , product vendors may begin the processes leading to full certification.

FIGURE 3 | Pentek Quartz Model 5550

3U VPX 8 Channel A/D and D/A RFSoC SOSAAligned Processor incorporates RF and optical backplane using VITA 66 or VITA 67 connectors. Top cover removed to show details.

The DoD is now issuing requests for proposals and information clearly favoring respondents that offer OSA-based solutions. The active participation in SOSA Consortium by the DoD – including the Army, Navy, and Air Force – embedded industry vendors, universities, and research facilities gives evidence of their substantial commitments of resources and personnel. These clear signals ensure that SOSA is well on its way to revolutionize the future of embedded military electronics systems. ■

Rodger

Hosking is Vice President, Mercury MixedSignal, and cofounder of Pentek. He has spent more than 30 years in the electronics industry and has authored hundreds of articles about software radio and digital signal processing. He previously served as engineering manager at Wavetek/Rockland; he alsoholds patents in frequency synthesis and spectrum analysis.

He holds a BS degree in physics from Allegheny College in Pennsylvania and BSEE and MSEE degrees from Columbia University in New York.

ente no art of er ury https://www.pentek.com

Open architecture initiatives bolster unmanned sensors and systems

By Emma Helfrich, Technology Editor

The advent of unmanned systems reflects a huge aspect of warfare – that of protecting the warfighter –through the development of platforms that can be operated by humans from a distance, keeping them out of harm’s way. Some of these platforms are actually on the way to becoming fully autonomous. Hurdles in the way of both manufacturers and end users include interoperability and cost-efficiency. Although these hurdles are challenging, organizations including The Open Group and corresponding consortia have made noticeable strides to standardize in an effort to universalize otherwise complex unmanned systems.

Intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) missions can be lethal for troops as such, unmanned aerial systems (UASs) are ideally engineered for such scenarios. As the eyes and ears of treacherous military tasks, the unmanned platforms have become essential machinery on the battlefield since their initial development and use decades ago.

As both technology and war have evolved and progressed over time, so too

have UASs and the operations that they are deployed to carry out. Requirements centered around withstanding longer missions, avoiding detection, and the implementation of counter-measure systems continue to drive UAS advancements and inspire innovations in hardware and software development.

While today’s missions have become more complex and require more processing power, unmanned platforms running up against the need – requested by both manufacturers and end users – to simplify design and ease deployment. Moving away from platform-centric architectures not only encourages healthy competition in the market but could allow for more efficient operation and maintenance O in theater.

Open architecture initiatives led by such consortia as The Open Group’s Sensor Open Systems Architecture (SOSA), Future Airborne Capability Environment (FACE), and

the DoD’s Modular Open Systems Architecture (MOSA) approach are pushing for standards-based designs to ensure that these highly effective unmanned systems can keep pace with the evolving threat environment while remaining streamlined in their design. Officials believe that aligning UASs with the wave of standardi ation is the necessary next step in open architecture implementation.

Path to standards-enabled interoperability

UAS-centric missions are touted in the industry as being safer and more cost-effective than manned operations and have therefore become a near-ubiquitous aspect of modern warfare. The ability that unmanned platforms have to not only protect human warfighters but also to collect and process vast amounts of signals have cemented the UAS’s role in battle. Adoption of open architectures in this space has been gradual, however.

ight now, if you look at any military avionics architecture, it’s very platform-centric, says Ike Song, vice president of strategy in the mission systems division at Mercury Systems (Andover, Massachusetts) (Figure 1). “And the prime who owns that platform also owns that architecture. Plus that architecture is not really open. In commercial [applications] it’s a little bit easier because you only have two companies, Airbus and Boeing, but for military [applications] every single aircraft that’s out there, even within the same company, the architecture within their own avionics suite is different. So it’s really hard to adapt to those kinds of situations.

FIGURE 1 | Mercury’s 3U OpenVPX LDS3517 single-board computer is powered by a Xeon D processor and is SOSA aligned for maximum interoperability and technology reuse.

Without what industry professionals identify as a top-down approach, the ease of implementation provided by open architecture designs is more difficult to achieve. Manufacturers are pushing for what Song describes as a platform-agnostic design, meaning one architecture that can be inserted into multiple platforms with little modification both companies and standards organizations are noticing that their customers are advocating for platformagnostic as well.

It’s the same for ground systems. “When talking about SOSA and CMOSS [C5ISR/ EW (Command, Control, Communication, Computers, Cyber, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance/Electronic Warfare) Modular Open Suite of Standards], the dream is that somebody could drive their vehicle to the depot and say, ‘My x-y-z card is dead and I need a new one,’ and then they would be handed a new one and could drive away, says Jason DeChiaro, product manager at Curtiss-Wright (Ashburn, Virginia). “At no point in the conversation would they have to say what vehicle they’re driving or what variant of that vehicle it is. That’s a powerful statement, because today there are platforms with multiple variants that include different cables, mounting brackets, and hardware. With SOSA and CMOSS, you don’t have to worry about that since that’s part of the platform, not the mission payload.

A major obstacle in progress toward making that dream a reality for manufacturers, end users, and the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) has been the

slow nature of the defense market’s acquisition process. In comparison to commercial avionics, which is far outpacing defense, acquisition requirements have resulted in the DoD being slow to adopt new technology. One major piece of progress: The Tri-Service Memorandum released in 2019 has mandated the use of open system architecture for new programs, a promising advancement for the acquisition and standardization communities.

“There’s a law that all new major defense acquisitions have to use MOSA architecture, and derived from that, there was a memo that was put out by the secretary of the Army, Air Force, and the Navy – a Tri-Service memo – that is mandating open systems architecture for all new programs, e hiaro says. t called out specific things like V TO [Vehicular Integration for C4ISR/EW Interoperability], FACE, and SOSA. And each individual service has also expanded on that. So, with basically every new acquisition, even acquisitions that aren’t major defense acquisitions, we’re seeing the OSA re uirements.

Progress is ongoing, and industry officials hope that these requirements will promote a more widely accepting environment for standardization and eventually begin to shape all facets of UAS development from individual system components to connectivity. UAS payloads specifically could see a significant impact.

Requirements driving sensor payload design

Reliable communication is key in battle, and efficient dispersal and analysis of the data that UAS sensor payloads can collect could be vital to a victorious mission. As outlined in the Tri-Service memo, information-sharing across domains is essential to success on the battlefield. n order for sensor payloads on unmanned platforms to achieve this goal, industry officials assert that common standards will need to be a requirement.

“By defining system interfaces and embracing standards like the VITA 49.2 software radio protocol, SOSA makes it

FIGURE 2 | Elma Electronic’s 3U backplanes – aligned to the SOSA Technical Standard –are available populated with or without VITA 67.3 connectors for timing and RF connectivity, the six-slot and eight-slot backplanes designed to enable signal processing systems.

easier for multiple sensor platforms to be controlled by different operational equipment, to re uest sensor signal data, and then process it efficiently, says odger Hosking, vice president and cofounder of Pentek (Upper Saddle River, New Jersey).

There exists a corresponding push for standardizing not only the hardware- and software-level components of a sensor payload, but also how that sensor system connects with control stations. Whether the sensor load is an electro-optical/infrared O sensor or a radar, proponents of standardi ation in UASs are confident that a modular, open architecture could support the needs of multiple customers.

The payload designs will consider an infrastructure definition, leveraging well-defined payload cards, or P s, specified and constrained by slot and module profiles, says Ken Grob, director of embedded computing products at Elma Electronic (Fremont, California) (Figure 2). “Hardware classes include a primary payload, which is the workhorse SOSA profile. This profile supports compute-intensive, F radio fre uency , FPGA field-programmable gate array -S s single board computers , O-intensive S s, and thernet switch profiles.

Optimizing the unmanned sensor payload through standardization will in turn require advancements in connectivity. Next-generation technology like 5G could soon enable a more reliable balance between edge computing and ground computing for unmanned sensors.

“Some application standards, things like VICTORY and FACE, allow manufacturers to virtuali e a lot of the hardware, e hiaro says. The connectivity is over thernet now instead of all these discrete signals, which makes systems easier to upgrade later. These principles are applicable to all of the platforms, including unmanned.

Connectivity is key: Unmanned sensor payloads can be rendered useless without robust signal processing. Esoteric, customized systems can be advantageous for an end user, but companies insist that in order to reduce cost and increase efficiency, standardized processing modules are critical for unmanned applications.

Standardization facilitates efficient signal processing

The multimodal mission threads defined by SOSA describing SA synthetic aperture radar], EW, and SIGINT [signals intelligence], are tasking the participants driving

the standard to define and build reference architectures to deliver useable and working building blocks, Grob says. odularity is apparent across all area and output of the standard near-term o goals are driving initiatives to develop, field, and deploy systems defined with a specific purpose to prove out and test how sensors can operate in more than one mode, and potentially be rapidly reconfigured. The OSA approach, of which SOSA is a key component, provides a significant contribution to the near-term planning, defined by involved service branches and labs within the o .

ndustry experts are confident that standardi ation will broaden the hori ons for signal-processing technology in unmanned avionics suites. Officials also claim that an additional benefit of making open architecture a re uirement could be an easier path toward e uipping processors with artificial intelligence A and machine learning (ML) capabilities.

ew processing devices include artificial intelligence and machine learning engines to help classify and ualify sensor signals close to the antenna, osking says. “Cognitive radios and adaptive spectral exploitation can help ensure more reliable and more secure radio communication links. SOSA and other open standards are ready to accommodate these new technologies as they emerge. Figure .

The implementation of these open-architecture initiatives is intended to push the adoption of next-generation technologies to authori e more efficient signal processing overall. From the moment that a UAS receives a signal, down to the second that it reaches the ground station, the way that the gathered information is processed and disseminated could be positively impacted by standardization.

“When you have an architecture like that of SOSA and you have those pools of resource, it makes it easier to bring the algorithm to the data or bring the algorithm to the sensor, e hiaro says. ringing the algorithm to the sensor allows for faster processing since you don’t have to wait for transport of the large raw data set. You can then send the actionable information back over the network links, which in a lot of cases can be slow or congested. Bringing the algorithm forward gives you a huge advantage ust by itself.

With modular open architecture initiatives enabling more signal processing to be done directly on the unmanned platform, the ever-present objectives surrounding the limitation of size, weight, power, and cost (SWaP-C) could become easier to accomplish.

SWaP-C optimization for UAS pulls from commercial sector

While minimi ing SWaP is not its most important ob ective, osking says, SOSA will inspire competition from vendors to provide more performance in their boardlevel products for wider bandwidths, higher channel densities, increased digital signal processor capabilities, and faster system interfaces. All of these can benefit SWaP in UASs by reducing the number of boards in UAS systems.

With the edge computing traditionally being done on the UAS platform, space has been at a premium. Now – as industries see the maturation of 5G, minimal-latency connectivity, and higher throughput manufacturers are confident that the previously mentioned balance between ground-station processing and edge processing could save space and minimize heat, while standardized architectures could reduce cost.

“With respect to SOSA PICs, or payload implementation, technology roadmaps drive significantly more powerful chip sets and single-chip solutions, Grob says. ooling and constraint methodologies are evolving, allowing thermal and power approaches to close in a given design, enabling one- and two card-processing elements to support new A and acceleration technologies.

FIGURE 3 | Pentek’s Model 5553

Quartz RFSoC 3U VPX SOSA aligned processor features Gen 3 RFSoC devices with wider signal bandwidths and higher resolution.

SWaP-C optimization in UASs isn’t a challenge exclusive only to the military. Commercial avionics and urban air mobility (UAM) markets are facing the same obstacles and can reap the benefits of modular architectures all the same these industries just have the ability to address them more quickly.

The military-acquisition process is very regimented, but industry experts claim that they are seeing inspiration being taken from the commercial sector and UAM. Mercury Systems’ Song claims that seeing this activity in the UAM space is a hopeful sign for both commercial and military UASs because it could mean cycle time to develop new technology will be faster and could be leveraged for use in in defense architectures.

“[UAM] is trying many different architectures, much more than you could ever dream of in commercial and military avionics, Song says. What that means is that you’re going to have a lot of fragmented solutions in the meantime. But they are going to converge into one or two, or maybe even three, architectures that will be the evolution of next-generation avionics architecture that could be implemented in military unmanned avionics and sensor load. ■

Simplifying the integration of Assured PNT with CMOSS/SOSA aligned solutions

By Jason DeChiaro

From a design and engineering perspective, there are many moving parts to consider and combine in order to arrive at a position, navigation, and timing (PNT) truth. In addition, solutions must be easy to integrate into the available space on existing platforms, whether they are unmanned aerial systems (UASs) or other aircraft, ground-based operations, or systems at sea. They must provide reliable positioning information in GPS-degraded environments, where tall buildings, heavy foliage, and underground positions can affect signal quality, as well as in GPS-denied environments where adversaries have intervened to jam or compromise GPS signals.

Designing and developing an open standards-based deployable solution for assured position, navigation, and timing (A-PNT) that relies on information from multiple complementary sources, is not an easy task. In order to leverage today’s leading modular open systems approach standards, a desirable solution will be aligned with the U.S. Army’s C5ISR [Command, Control, Computers, Communications, Cyber, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance]/EW

Modular Open Suite of Standards (CMOSS), The Open Group Sensor Open Systems Architecture (SOSA) Technical Standard, and the OpenVPX timing module. These solutions must be attained using the space-constrained 3U OpenVPX form factor preferred by CMOSS and SOSA.

Holistic A-PNT practices in action

A holistic approach to A-PNT is based on multiple complementary PNT technologies that leverage proven and trusted techniques to arrive at A-PNT truth and provide a trusted solution that will protect personnel and e uipment in the field. Whether on tactical and combat vehicles, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), unmanned underwater vehicles (UUV), or aircraft, proven hardware products with PNT capabilities can be upgraded to deliver higher performance and more sophisticated capabilities

Partially autonomous or unmanned trucks shown during a U.S. Army experiment on a Michigan highway. U.S. Army photo.

as technology evolves, ensuring warfighters always have access to the latest innovations to keep them safe and steps ahead of adversaries. Modules and systems designed in alignment with open standards such as The SOSA Technical Standard will simplify and reduce the cost of integration. The following is an overview of just a few of the technical challenges involved in developing effective and reliable A-PNT solutions.

Data processing

Data from all available PNT sources must be processed in a way that enables accurate positioning information to be provided to warfighters and systems when needed. Computing solutions must be able to process data that is received from a wide variety of sources, at different times, and in different formats. Complex data-processing algorithms are

required to amalgamate and process all of this information in a way that accounts for varying and disparate temporal and spatial data. All of this processing must be completed extremely quickly so that people and systems always have access to accurate PNT information.

Data distribution

Once the data is processed, it must be made available to a variety of other systems and clients on the platform. The data may also need to be made available to systems on associated platforms in the field and at command centers. The main challenge here is that deployed platforms combine a variety of legacy and modern systems and clients with differing levels of sophistication, communications interfaces, and data processing requirements. Each system to which PNT information will be distributed –and more importantly, A-PNT information – must be considered.

THE TRANSITION TO A-PNT INFORMATION MUST BE “INVISIBLE” SO WARFIGHTERS CAN CONTINUE TO FOCUS ON MISSION TASKS RATHER THAN STRUGGLE WITH UNFAMILIAR CONTROLS AND INFORMATION FORMATS.

Interoperability

A-PNT solutions must also be able to interoperate with existing legacy and modern systems on the deployed platform and must also anticipate future interoperability requirements. Hardware interoperability is challenging because it means A-PNT solutions must support the right combination of physical interfaces and pinouts to connect to legacy, modern, and future systems. Software interoperability is challenging because it means software must be easily updatable to support new capabilities and technologies as they emerge. In short, the entire A-PNT solution must be designed to interoperate with past, present, and future hardware and software.

Ease of use and flexibility

A-P T solutions must provide P T information to warfighters in a way that is fast and easy for them to access and understand, even while they are on the move or in dangerous situations. This is challenging because warfighters are already very familiar with GPS systems and how GPS information is provided. The transition to A-PNT information must be invisible so warfighters can continue to focus on mission tasks rather than struggle with unfamiliar controls and information formats. Developing A-PNT solutions that deliver an imperceptible level of change across all of the different systems involved is extremely difficult from every perspective physical design, installation, integration, and usability.

Benefiting users and integrators

It’s a lot to ask of holistic A-PNT systems, addressing all of these challenges and requirements. With an A-PNT solution based on multiple complementary PNT information sources, warfighters have a far better ability to understand and respond to threats on the battlefield. They can uickly grasp the exact state of P T signals, and then use this insight in a strategic way to conduct navigation warfare (NAVWAR), thereby enabling them to take defensive and offensive actions based on PNT information they trust to be accurate and uncompromised.

Knowing that GPS information is always at risk and that the information received may not be accurate adds considerable stress to already difficult situations. When warfighters are working with trusted P T information from complementary sources, they

no longer have to worry about the risks associated with a single point of failure. With A-P T information, warfighters have a higher level of trust in the information based on the knowledge that a range of defenses have been applied to protect against the possibility that inaccurate information will be provided.

A-PNT that is seamlessly integrated into the available space on the platform makes it easy for warfighters to transition from GPS to A-P T information. nstead of having to think about the technology transition or learn new ways of operating, all actions related to location information are natural and intuitive for the warfighter.

Open standards-based A-PNT and radial clock module

An example of an open standards-based solution for A-PNT is the Curtiss-Wright VPX3-673 module. The 3U OpenVPX board is aligned with CMOSS, the SOSA Technical

FIGURE 1 | The 3U OpenVPX board is aligned with CMOSS, the SOSA Technical Standard, and the OpenVPX timing module standard.

Standard, and the OpenVPX timing module standard. The variant module contains a GPS/GNSS receiver (M-CODE or SAASM), chip scale atomic clock (CSAC), and an onboard inertial measurement unit (IMU), all within a single slot. The module is intended for radial clock distribution applications and can provide a server for various low-power timing services. (Figure 1.)

The 10 degree of freedom IMU enables precise motion tracking in a denied or untrusted GPS environment. Support for an onboard GB-GRAM type II GPS with SAASM or M-CODE support is provided, including dedicated zeroize and keyfill functionality. An S- port and RF 1 PPS input are provided for interfacing with an external RS-232 GPS sources. ■

Jason DeChiaro is a system architect at Curtiss-Wright. He received his electrical engineering degree, with distinction, from Worcester Polytechnic Institute. His responsibilities include supporting customers in architecting deployable VPX systems including CMOSS/SOSA compliant designs. Jason has over 15 years of engineering experience in the defense industry supporting the U.S. Air Force, U.S. Army, and U.S. Navy as well as the IC community. In addition to architecting VPX systems, Jason also supports customers’ assured position, navigation, and timing (A-PNT) requirements.

urtiss right efense olutions https://www.curtisswrightds.com/

Chassis managers: Monitoring chassis health in open architecture systems

By Gary Hanson

Monitoring the health, power, and cooling of VPX boards used in all military applications, including radar, electronic warfare (EW), communications, sensor processing, etc., is just as important as keeping an eye on the performance and capability of the end system. This health-monitoring capability and flexibility becomes even more important as open standards initiatives – such as The Open Group’s Sensor Open Systems Architecture (SOSA) Technical Standard – are making chassis managers a requirement, as more commonality is designed into radar, EW, and communications systems.

hassis managers as defined in V TA 46.11 – enable the system designer to find faults before any defects negatively impact the individual board or the entire system correctly implemented, the chassis manager also can help maintain power levels and reduce overall downtime. t directly benefits the warfighter by providing reconfigurability for faster redeployment and health monitoring if any chassis elements fail.

Chassis managers are akin to earlywarning systems for operators of radar and EW signal-processing systems. They monitor the health of the chassis and its installed boards and will send out alerts for any health faults, using a chassis manager GUI as an easy user interface to the chassis manager. Chassis management also improves reset se uencing it should be noted that the specific VPX boards in a system, and their compatibility with VITA 46.11, will determine the level at which the chassis manager can diagnose and respond to system events.

The reconfiguration capability provided by the chassis manager enables faster deployment, giving system integrators the ability to use reliable, already tested components in a new system. Development time is also reduced by having all software tools already in place and understood by the team.

odule vendors benefit as well, as they can avoid source-code changes for every new module and can even reduce SKUs of the same device, because the customer can handle the reconfiguration. The chassis manager also reduces system downtime and long-term life cycle costs at the repair depot because it can reconfigure systems uickly for changing mission requirements. Due to the designed-in commonality and standardization, spares are also able to be shared between systems.

These solutions will create a sensor log for all the devices within the chassis and will monitor these sensors, but the chassis manager itself cannot make changes to

these sensors. A list of all sensors connected to each intelligent FRU in the system, along with any threshold or limits, is maintained via the chassis manager. Logs in general will provide a history of all events – such as an over-temperature condition or an under-voltage condition and are configurable. ou can configure the chassis manager to overwrite the log once it is full, or you can configure the chassis manager to maintain the log and only erase it with an operator command.

Other benefits of a chassis manager include monitoring of system cooling, inventory management, and an ability to restart and gracefully reboot.

Before chassis management

Prior to the release of VITA 46.11 “System anagement on VPX, V TA . or VPX designers relied upon front-panel lightemitting diode (LED) alerts to notify them of thermal or power errors and built-in-test (BIT) functions to monitor interruptions. Only backplane voltages and sometimes the fan speed or

a fan-fail signal) or the chassis temperature – were monitored. Nothing existed to properly monitor system faults and provide real-time alerts.

Without using elaborate middleware, no central location existed where a developer could consistently monitor critical parameters such as board temperature and health, backplane voltages, chassis temperature, or fan speed. With electronic warfare (EW) and radar system requirements steadily getting more stringent, a better and more robust monitoring system was needed.

From PICMG to VITA 46.11

To tackle this problem, the VITA Standards Organi ation VSO released in the V TA . specification, also known as the System Management of VPX specification. V TA . is a modified version of the PICMG shelf-management specification, originally developed for ompactP , modified and expanded in AdvancedTCA (ATCA), a PICMGdeveloped open modular platform.

The VITA 46.11 Chassis Management subsystem uses 3.3V_AUX power so the chassis manager is still active when a VITA 62.0 (or equivalent) power supply is inhibited. It can be used to monitor and control managed F Us field-replaceable units), even when their payload power is off. (Figure 1.)

A chassis manager’s primary function is to discover all FRUs (IPMCs) in the chassis monitor the sensors for each F U report any abnormal or failed sensors report fan failures or clogged filters ad ust the fan speed for overunder-temperature conditions and report or shut down due to over-/undervoltage/current conditions.

VITA 46.11 layers

The three VITA 46.11 chassis manager layers are the Intelligent Platform Management Controller (IPMC), chassis manager, and system manager. These management layers are hierarchical in nature, where the IPMC (integrated into each VPX module and representing that module to the chassis manager) communicates with the chassis manager, which, in turn, reports to the system manager. The system-management layer monitors multiple chassis.

Chassis

Chassis

Other

FIGURE 1 | VITA 46.11 topology – the base technology.

The basic components are the BMC (Baseboard Management Controller), the Intelligent Platform Management Bus (IPMB), and the IPMC (Intelligent Platform Management Controller). The IPMB is an enhanced I²C bus, while the IPMI is the messaging protocol that communicates across the IPMB.

The lower logical layer of management would be the IPMCs, which are required on all intelligent FRUs, such as front-loading VPX plug-in modules, fan trays, power supplies, and the like. The IPMC, which is in effect a slave to the chassis manager, provides the status of each board in the chassis it can also be customized for the end user. The board manufacturer determines what is important to monitor, defines what the particular failures can be within a board, then tweaks it per end-user requirements.

An IPMI controller for boards or intelligent FRUs is used to monitor the health of the board or FRU, voltages, temperature, device ID, serial numbers, part numbers, and software versions. The SDR repository will provide a full list of all the sensors on a particular board or FRU.

Tier 1 versus Tier 2

V TA . defines two tiers of functionality for the chassis manager and the IPMC to enable implementation flexibility. Tier is the easiest to implement while Tier 2 provides the highest functionality.

The minimum capabilities of a Tier 1 chassis manager include the ability to maintain an FRU population table containing information for each FRU in the chassis, whether a plug-in module or another type of chassis F U bridging between the System Manager logical layer and the P logical layer and maintaining IPMC state information for each IPMC in the chassis

The Tier 2 chassis manager adds functionality but also complexity, with capabilities that include:

› Tier 2 is a superset of Tier 1

› Supporting the discovery of each FRU in the chassis

› Supporting management of chassis infrastructure (power supplies, fans, etc.) including temperature, voltage, and intrusion sensors as well as power and thermal management

› Participating in event generation and reception

› Supporting event logging

› Supporting dynamic sensor devices

› Supporting FRU recovery, including FRU reset and power cycling

› FRU payload control – power, reset, graceful reboot, and initiating diagnostics

The minimum capabilities of the Tier 1 IPMC include responsibility for system IPMB startup and fault handling, support for the discovery of the FRU it controls, and support of access to the management information for the FRU it controls.

The Tier 2 IPMC adds additional capabilities that include participation in event generation and reception and support of a dynamic sensor device.

Thanks to contributions from The Open Group’s Sensor Open Systems Architecture (SOSA) Consortium to the VITA 62 standard, chassis managers now have the capability to monitor power supplies within a chassis. In development of the SOSA Technical Standard, Consortium members worked together to introduce VITA 46.11 to power-supply modules, as SOSA requires monitoring of the power supplies for reporting and control.

Ecosystem testing and interoperability

The VITA and OpenVPX ecosystems are relatively small when compared to those the SOSA initiative is targeting. The June 2019 signing of the Tri-Service Memo by every branch of the U.S. military service was a very important milestone, as it directs the defense agencies to consider open architectures and – specifically the SOSA architecture. Along came SOSA and, with it, huge numbers of interested parties were brought into the process – especially from the enduser side. Having the end user driving and requesting changes makes so many things possible that were simply impossible before.

SOSA also has crossover with the Hardware Open Systems Technologies (HOST) initiative, a standards framework that applies open architectures to highperformance embedded computing. These standards support a Modular Open Systems Approach (MOSA) to implementing systems based on commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) components for embedded computing on U.S. defense platform open systems.

To prove out the SOSA/HOST/VITA specifications, five vendors agreed to participate in live demos at the TriService Interoperability Demonstration (TSOA-ID), which was hosted by Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) in Atlanta, Georgia in early 2020. The demo also showcased the capabilities of Elma’s chassis manager. The vendors

contributed hardware and engineers to support the demo in a 3U 12-slot OpenVPX backplane. (Figure 2.)

The demo system had its slot profiles aligned to SOSA SnapShot 3. The slot breakdown is as follows: 4 payload and S slots network switch slots, F switch slot plus timing slot and power slots. For the demo, vendors and their contributions included:

› Elma: A CMOSS/SOSA backplane and a chassis manager, the Model CAE051762

› Elma: An IPMC carrier air-cooled test card, the 3U VPX CAE050357, that looks like a payload card to the chassis manager

› Concurrent Technologies: A single-board computer, the TR-E5X/3sd-RCx, which used a GUI to show cards as icons and ran Windows and scans for the identifiable plug-in cards

› Behlman Electronics: The SMART Vita 62 power supply, the VPXtra 700M-IQI, with 700 W DC and a dual-bus IPMB-A, IPMB-B

› rossfield Technologies ts m. storage module, CTLSX003 and Altera Stratix FPGA module, CTLCC002

The objective of the demo was to use the current SOSA and HOST standards to prove the success of plug-in cards built to those standards. V TA . Tier was a requirement, as was HOST alignment. The goal was to show interoperability of plug-in cards with chassis management components.

Going forward

Following the successful demo, work within the SOSA Consortium continues to make steady progress, leading up to the release of the SOSA Technical Standard 1.0 in 2021.

Within the VITA Standards Organization, work is being done to standardize IPMI messages for power supply parameters in VITA 62. Industry developments include an P solution that rossfield Technologies developed under a contract from AVA . The rossfield P

is easily modifiable as it can be configured via an P generator this capability enables quick personalization of the controller. Moreover, the chassis manager solution can be adapted to different environments.

Along those lines, rossfield Technologies is also pursuing reconfiguration of VPX plug-in cards via the IPMC, which will enable a system manager to reconfigure a plug-in card to fit different mission requirements. This feature is critical to both reducing system cost and rapidly deploying systems to the warfighter.

The chassis manager’s reconfigurability and effective health monitoring translates to faster deployments of technology, quick redeployments of chassis to meet changing mission requirements, and reduced downtime, which translate into lower long-term life cycle costs. ■

Gary Hanson is a Senior Systems Engineer with Elma Electronic.

He received a B.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering from Iowa State University. Gary has become well-known in the industry for his expertise in system and chassis management technologies and is a very active contributor to the VITA Standards Organization and The Open Group’s SOSA Consortium technical working groups.

lma le troni elma om

FIGURE 2 | Pictured is the equipment from Elma, Concurrent, Crossfield, and Behlman used in the 3U VPX Chassis Management Inter-Op Demo.

Versatility iskeyas OpenVPX enclosure requirements continue to evolve

By Justin Moll

Despite the fact that OpenVPX is an open standard architecture, there is a significant amount of variation of system platforms. The application needs for OpenVPX systems continue to evolve rapidly. New challenges brought by The Open Group’s SOSA [Sensor Open Systems Architecture] Consortium’s efforts; new complementary VITA [VMEbus International Trade Association] standards; size, weight, and power (SWaP) concerns; the expanding number of backplane profiles; and SpaceVPX implementations are requiring a versatile approach by the backplane/enclosure developers.

Being an OpenVPX backplane developer can be maddening: Even with established V TA profiles, there are so many variations that it can be very challenging to develop a standard backplane. Once upon a time, backplane design was largely a factor of the architecture and its form factor (3U or 6U) and the number of slots. With OpenVPX, in contrast, there are do ens of V TA routing profiles that all have their own signal definitions. In recent years, the ability to add optical (VITA 66.x) and RF (VITA 67.x) housings

on the backplanes creates a wide variety of new configurations to the list of profiles. There are various subsets of the VITA 66 (.1, .2, .3, .4, .5) and VITA 67 housings (.1, .2, .3a, .3b, .3c, .3d) as of this writing, most of which require differences in the backplane design. Complicating all of this is that fact of the possibility of different slot pitches. The 1.0-inch is typical for a backplane, but 0.8 inch is not unheard of, and wider than 1.0-inch pitch is no longer a rarity.

The Open Group’s SOSA [Sensor Open Systems Architecture] Consortium’s efforts have brought timing/clocking protocols to the backplane, which adds another factor of differentiation to designs. Of course, the backplane speed requirement can change the stack-up of your routing, back-drilling, and PCB [printed circuit board] materials that you use. Therefore, the speed of the backplane is yet another factor that can prevent standardi ation. With speeds hitting P e Gen Gb sec and Gb lanes

of ~25 Gb/sec), the performance challenges are increasing. Housings or cutouts for the VITA 66/67 contacts limits space for routing, particularly when the design is a 3U and a larger slot count.

So, you can imagine the number of options for an OpenVPX backplane design. There are slots (approximately 10 common slot si es , profile options average of about three for each common slot size), U or U, V TA options about five common versions between them), speeds (three common speed tiers), how many slots have VITA 66/67 cutouts/housings common configurations , and more. This would require 10/3/2/5/3/15 backplane designs just to get some common designs laid out, not even accounting for any custom routing, specialty I/O requirements, VITA 62 PSU [power supply unit] slots, specialty slot pitches, etc.

FIGURE 1 | Development backplanes can offer versatile configuration options to address the various OpenVPX, VITA 66 (optical), and VITA 67 (RF) implementations.

With the increased use of V TA housings, there are a few configurations that can help make the options more manageable. This first is an -slot U OpenVPX backplane with 4x VPX power and ground-only slots and 4x VITA 67.3/VITA 66.5 cutouts. (Thankfully, the VITA 66.5 folks devised a way to use the same VITA 67.3 cutouts on the backplane.) With SOSA clocking, the backplane provides versatility for development systems. Single-slot power and ground backplanes with either VITA 66 or VITA 67 also provide flexibility in design these can be added to a standard backplane profile configuration to expand the options. n some development systems, it is desirable to have VITA 62 slots. These can be offered in standalone single-slot power interface boards or as part of an overall backplane. For development, a version with four VPX slots, two V TA . slots, and dual V TA PSU slots offers further versatility. Figure shows a variation of these V TA configurations.

Chassis mechanicals – even more options

There exist so many possible iterations of OpenVPX backplane options, plus the many chassis options don’t make things any easier. However, there are more ways to enable modularity in the enclosure. First, the application will help dictate the type of enclosure. One example: Is a commercial rackmount or desktop required or is it a deployed unit? Some OpenVPX applications are used in a benign environment, often in a data center or ground communications hub. The advantage of the 19-inch rackmount is that it’s ideal for prototyping/development and can often be used in the applications that do not require military-level ruggedization. A designer can also start with a commercial-grade version for development and go to a rugged rackmount in deployment. As seen with the backplanes, there are a lot of options: various slot pitches (0.8, 1.0, 1.2 inch, etc.), 3U versus 6U boards, various cooling methods, and more.

SOSA based systems typically use high-power boards along with VITA 66 for optical and or V TA for F contacts. t is common for multiple slots to be more than W each. High slot counts can create the need for a system that can dissipate a high amount of heat. Larger chassis can implement high-CFM fans that pull the air from below the card cage and blow the heat 90 degrees out the rear of the system. This setup enables rear-transition modules (RTMs) to be plugged in all of the slots in the rear of the enclosure, maximizing density for testing or deployment. The capability to handle the RF/optical cabling and any RTM or VPX cabling interfaces in this type of front-to-rear cooled chassis is important for SOSA systems. The chassis can cool at least 2000 W in the 6U size (for 3U OpenVPX boards), but with a taller enclosure can cool even more.

6U OpenVPX boards can also be placed in a 9U tall chassis, even possibly with a divider plate to split the enclosure into two rows of 3U slots. Alternatively, the designer can employ a hybrid solution with a mix of 3U slots and 6U slots. Rather than using a

chassis where the boards are mounted vertically, horizontally plugged-in boards can save rack space. Usually these systems only use between two and eight slots.

To maximi e versatility in any of these designs, it is important to have flexibility in the type of card guides and their position. As noted, the pitch of some slots may be wider than others. Therefore, having the ability to space the slots as needed with speciali ed card guides is a huge benefit. This situation might include the use of card guides for conduction-cooled boards, which may be used alongside card guides for air-cooled boards.

SOSA is also shifting the chassis power to V heavy systems. A modular fixed PSU enables users to select the submodules of 3.3 V, 5 V, 12 V, and AUX voltages that may be required for all types of OpenVPX applications. With the RF/optical options, there is typically the need to provide more I/O and cabling options to the rear of the chassis. Using an enclosure with fans above the card cage allows for plenty of space for the rear I/O cabling or RTMs in the system. Further, SOSA is leveraging the use of VITA 46.11 system management, which means that the chassis is able to monitor the slots, voltages, and fans.

Worlds

colliding

SpaceVPX brings new challenges as it supports the use of both 160 mm and 220 mm deep boards. Further, the pitch of the modules is often wider, at a 1.2 inch board width. To enable more versatility for SpaceVPX, a dual-depth OpenVPX test/development chassis can be utilized. (Figure 2.) To support the various types, the enclosure needs to support both the 160 mm and 220 mm depth boards, a 1.0 and 1.2 inch

pitch, etc. Special card guides for the 1.2 inch pitch needed to be created in both the depths for conduction-cooled boards.

FIGURE 2 | SpaceVPX uses both 160 mm and 220 mm depth OpenVPX boards as well as wider spacing options. A dual-depth chassis provides the ability to test the various card sizes/pitches in the same enclosure.

One of the benefits in working with the special form factor re uirements for SpaceVPX is the smoother transition to supporting extra-deep modules and/or wider boards. Engineers at several of the RF-centric defense contractors are packing more punch into each module. As a result, in some applications the boards are getting longer or wider. These hybrid OpenVPX systems require enclosure card cages that can support these sizes and properly cool them. Figure 3 shows a military-spec rugged 19-inch rackmount chassis platform for customized OpenVPX supporting wider and deeper boards. To support the heavier cards, an extra-rugged milled card-guide tray and other elements ensure that the unit can meet the shock and vibration requirements of the application. Although this design had nothing to do with SpaceVPX, having that experience and the specialty components helped leverage a solution for another OpenVPX application.

Other space-saving options

It is certainly possible to use a horizontal-mount enclosure to save rack space and weight. Typically, these enclosures would be for smaller systems, namely six or fewer slots or less for 6U boards and eight or fewer slots for 3U boards. With the boards mounted side by side, a U board will fit next to a U board in the same slot row. Therefore, it is easy to mix and match both 6U and 3U boards. The 3U option also includes the possibility of using pluggable VITA 62 PSUs. Alternatively, there are modular fixed PSUs that can go above the card cage.

For example, a U tall hori ontal-mount enclosure can support five OpenVPX boards in the 6U height and four 3U OpenVPX boards along with a pluggable VITA 62 PSU (all at one-inch pitch). It is possible to have various levels of ruggedization for these types of enclosures.

ATRs and cooling options

SOSA and VITA 66/67 implementations in ATR format require adequate spacing beneath or behind the backplane for the cabling bend radii. Therefore, many of the legacy ATRs in the market cannot support those requirements without some redesign. One solution that gets around that issue is a front- or rear-loaded ATR. With the cards sliding in horizontally into the rear of the enclosure, there is space behind the backplane to cable around to the front of the chassis or to the back panel. Figure 4 is an example version with three OpenVPX slots and one VITA 62 PSU slot.

For a top-loaded ATR, there can be a standoff for the VITA 66/67 contacts to allow for the cabling to go through. As SOSA based systems tend to have very high power, there are now cooling conventions to achieve the heat dissipation needed for 125 W to 185 W OpenVPX boards in the wedge-lock format. Cooling a 185 W board is achievable with air in the air-cooled board format without wedge-lock casings . nough airflow can be directed to have the airflow pass directly over the chip sets. When the card is encased in a conduction-cooled format with wedgelocks, the air can pass over the board, but much of the airflow is blocked by the structure of the card. The si e and shape of a typical conduction-cooled board acts as a giant airflow blocker.

With optimi ed spacing between the modules and using airflow baffle to optimi e the air paths, simulation has shown that these boards can be cooled in a commercial forced-air enclosure. For a system re uiring military-specified fans, this aspect becomes extremely difficult. The V TA . standard has the potential to resolve this issue for many of the high-wattage boards in the market, as the specification provides channels on the conduction-cooled modules for the air to flow directly over and through the heat sink fins. This approach will certainly help improve the cooling for those modules. For the hottest level of boards, a liquid-cooled enclosure would be required.

A versatile world

Designers of military and aerospace solutions can look to OpenVPX for a rich and diverse ecosystem for leading-edge C5ISR [command, control, communications, computers,

FIGURE 3 | Designers can leverage the OpenVPX standard for specialty designs. This military-spec rugged enclosure shows an example with extra-deep 6U boards and a wider pitch.

FIGURE 4 | A front-or rear-loaded .5 ATR for 3U OpenVPX can easily allow both standard OpenVPX modules or versions with VITA 66/67 interfaces in a compact design.

combat systems, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance] applications. As the requirements get more complex, providing versatile designs that can be used in a wide range of applications is a key to success. ■

Justin Moll is vice president, sales and marketing, at Pixus Technologies. He has been a sales and marketing management consultant and senior-level manager for embedded computing companies for more than 20 years. Justin has led various committees in the open standards community and is a regular guest speaker at industry events.

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Military power conversion: the value of strategic customization

By Mike Eyre

As the military-electronics industry continues to transition toward commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) products, established standards, and modular designs, the need for tailored solutions remains – there is a middle ground.

Program managers and acquisition professionals supporting the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) have long sought to drive down cost and schedule risks. One of the simplest ways to achieve this goal is by using components and subsystems conforming to wellestablished industry standards. The trend of increased standardization holds true in the power conversion market with the growing adoption of both physical and electrical industry standards, such as VITA 62, VITA 46, and MIL-STD-1275, among others.

owever, there is a fly in that ointment The benefits of well-defined design standards come at the cost of a reduced

capability to tailor and customize power supply solutions to meet the unique performance requirements prevalent in military systems.

Rugged power supplies capable of addressing unique industry challenges have become a critical design element in today’s military electronics. Mature standards such as L-ST - and L-ST - , defining electrical power characteristics or MIL-STD-461, characterizing electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) characteristics, have standardized best-design practices for engineers.

Meanwhile, budget constraints have forced program managers to seek commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) parts for modular, open architecture solutions to address onerous challenges on behalf of our warfighters. The o has distributed its intent to ac uire hardware solutions that comply with modular open systems architecture (MOSA) standards to support rapid upgrades of technology, address obsolescence, and ensure interoperability between systems.

The VPX form factor has quickly become a design tool engineers leverage to address many of the above standardization challenges, all while improving performance.

The standardization of mechanical and electrical features has resulted in VPX products viewed as a commodity. However, the benefits of standardi ation may continue to be outweighed by the challenging performance requirements engineers face. Output voltages, load current limit levels, stable responses to significant load step, , inrush current surge limitation, and telemetry communication are some of the critical elements of a power supply integrated to a military system. Possessing the ability to customize these, and many other features of a power supply, even within a standardized mechanical form factor, remains an important capability to the design engineering, systems engineering, and testing community.

To many, customization is a scary word, suggesting increased cost, schedule slips, or increased technical risk. In reality,

customization can actually reduce cost and schedule. A power supply manufacturer who can support tailoring of key features may be a designer’s ally, especially when designing from an existing, field-proven, baseline product with little or no nonrecurring engineering (NRE) costs and rapid prototyping capabilities. This is especially true with an aging workforce specializing in power electronics.

Many COTS ruggedized or military-grade VPX products exist today, built to comply with some or all of the following: VITA 46 mechanical and VITA 62 electrical specifications, as well as L-ST - , L-ST - aircraft electric power , MIL-STD-1275 (military vehicle electric power), and MIL-STD-810 (environmental conditions these comprise standards establishing the minimum criteria for any power supply implemented in a defense application.

Customization of power supplies provides a distinct yet obvious advantage to the design engineer to meet performance specifications. Whether it be saving a card slot in a chassis, reducing the number of power supplies required, or addressing a unique EMC requirement, customization can reduce total system cost and technical risk to put increased capabilities rapidly into the hands of the warfighter. t also provides a pathway to support the DoD’s open-architecture standards. When approached strategically, customization can be a cost-effective and low-risk approach to address requirements.

Next we’ll discuss several examples of what we call strategic customization, as parts built to comply with baseline con-figurations are not capable of addressing every uni ue specification. The benefits of defined design standards are numerous, especially in support of open-architecture system designs that shoot for reducing life cycle costs and development time. However, the ability to deviate from design standards can be a priceless aid for engineers in order to meet the unique performance requirements prevalent in military platforms. Let’s look at a few real-world examples of this approach in practice.

Example one: varying output voltage and current

An engineer wants to use a COTS product with its baseline capabilities, but the specification re uires specific output voltage and current levels to effectively support its rugged, single-board computer (SBC) and storage cards within the enclosure via custom backplane design. Rather than accepting the suboptimal COTS product and sacrificing the capability or performance of their existing design, the engineer should request to speak with the power-supply manufacturer’s design team. After learning about the target specification, the manufacturer’s design team rapidly implements the necessary changes to support the integration of those peripherals, providing a customized power supply that continues to comply with the vast majority of industry standards. Adjusting the outputs to meet the customer’s unique current and voltage requirements is a low-cost, low-risk, and rapid solution to enable systemlevel performance.

Leveraging the proven performance of a mature design, this approach allows the engineer to successfully achieve ualification of the system upon first attempt and leverage the unique backplane design. While the COTS product was 90% of the solution, rapid tailoring of the product to the needs of this customer ultimately addresses the uni ue needs of the warfighter without significant changes to system, cost, or delivery timeline.

The intent of the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) Modular Open Systems Approach (MOSA) program can be addressed with architectures, such as The Open Group’s Sensor Open Systems Architecture (SOSA) aligned system designs.

To further this point, modifying the mature design to provide increased voltage and current limits at these three outputs, and deviating from the VITA standard, ensures a second power supply was not required within the enclosure. This approach not only saved the cost of a second power supply, but also saves an open card slot to support integration of future product enhancements and capabilities. This is an excellent example of both how customization need not be considered risky or expensive, and how sticking with the VITA VPX standards to ensure an open architecture at the system level can significantly drive life cycle costs and development time down for the end user component versus system requirements.

Standardization is an industry trend providing positive results for both the cost and schedule of defense programs, large and small. A fine balance between component-level specifications and system-level specifications is a key aspect in any engineering effort. An excellent example of a component-level specification is the V TA VPX standard defining electrical connector parameters, including voltage and current levels. Standards such as MIL-STD-1275 may be applied at either a component level or system level to control 28 VDC electrical power in a military ground platform.

It can be stated that industry appreciates and values standards at both the component and system level. However, it is often necessary to deviate from the standard to meet 100% of both component- and system-level requirements. very system on the battlefield poses a unique set of challenges, forcing design engineers to make difficult decisions affecting cost, schedule, and risk. Customization to meet open architecture standards can be done in a cost-effective and schedule-driven environment.

Example two: unique mechanical and thermal management challenges

In this example, the engineer’s requirement includes the need to incorporate a redundant AC power connector into a 3U VPX power supply. This factor takes

customization of a baseline VPX power supply one step further than our previous example, tailoring both mechanical and thermal design features.

SOLVE EMI ISSUES,

DOD’S INTENT OF MAINTAINING AN OPEN-ARCHITECTURE APPROACH.

In this instance, a customization effort similarly reduces risk while incorporating important capabilities at a system level. As before, the project starts with the engineer identifying a mature OTS solution that closely matches the specifications they’re looking for, then engaging with the manufacturer’s design team to discuss the unique specifications of their re uirement compared to this OTS product. n this example, the mechanical housing can be quickly designed around the board to address the redundant input power requirements (a second connector compliant to MIL-STD-38999) at the system level. Such an approach not only addresses the redundant AC power connector requirement, but also allows for improved thermal management while ensuring the integration of other COTS VPX peripheral cards.

With close communication and collaboration with the manufacturer, it is realistic to complete the above design modifications and rapidly develop and test prototypes within 60 days. At the end of this exercise, a design review provides the engineer with enough confidence and data on the modified VPX power supply to begin design modifications to the enclosure and backplane to accommodate the added connector. Starting from an existing and mature MIL-VPX product that addressed a large percentage of the power supply performance specification was a no-nonsense and schedule-driven decision that enables the engineer to obtain a 100% solution for their requirement.

Considering our earlier example, a VPX form factor SBC required 360 watts of power, exceeding the VITA 62 standard for the VS2 connector contact. While deviating from the V TA electrical standard, the desired U mechanical form factor is not changed, ensuring an open architecture system and retention of the benefits of the VPX form factor.

Further, following SOSA aligned design practices ensures the ability to maximize COTS components within the enclosure – the best of both worlds. At a system level, a standardized chassis and backplane can be maintained, along with use of peripheral devices, reducing total life cycle costs and maximizing the intended nature of standardized enclosure designs. Supporting both component- and system-level requirements is achievable by tailoring the design of standard products, which can be done in an expedited and cost-effective manner, significantly decreasing risk and keeping the project on course with existing delivery and cost projections.

Example three: EMC and standardization

In the ever-evolving world of defense electronics, higher power densities, increasing current and faster switching, and EMC continues to be one of the most challenging endeavors of the system designer. odern power switches offer significantly higher switching speeds. This means that the rise and fall times for both voltage and current waveforms are much shorter – a root cause of many electromagnetic interference (EMI) issues in switching power supply design.

As such, solutions to address the litany of EMI challenges need to remain agile and creative when it comes to power-supply design. Standardization on the other hand, encourages repeatability and deincentivizes change. To solve EMI issues, customization is a key element in the toolbox of the design engineer, especially in keeping with the DoD’s intent of maintaining an open-architecture approach.

TO

CUSTOMIZATION IS A KEY ELEMENT IN THE TOOLBOX OF THE DESIGN ENGINEER, ESPECIALLY IN KEEPING WITH THE

To qualify a power supply, it is tested in cascade with a line impedance stabilization network (LISN) to standardize test results and simulate the run of cables feeding the tested item. Typically, power supplies installed in small platforms are allowed to be tested with low-inductance LISN, so they will not become unstable and oscillate.

owever, in scenarios where long cable runs are prevalent, the standard must be used. n this example, an engineer identifies a OTS watt converter for integration into their airborne application. After engaging with the manufacturer’s design team, the engineer states that the converter must be tested for compliance with L-ST - F when connected to the power line through L S s. The design team modifies the existing OTS product design by integrating a larger bulk capacitance to help support the inductance re uirement. Again, deviating from the VITA 62 electrical standard to rapidly address a unique EMC requirement, a close partnership with the manufacturer’s design team enables the engineer to identify a schedule-friendly, low-risk solution.

Powering nonstandard loads with standard power supplies

The standard VPX chassis is commonly used by integrators as an enclosure for a wide variety of applications, including radar, electronic warfare, communications, and more. Each application brings its own unique set of performance and operational requirements. In this example, an engineer needs a VPX power supply to feed a radar load, made up of digital circuits (signal conditioner), analog low power circuits (preamplifier , and analog high-power circuits power amplifier .

The form factor and connector are standard VITA 62 and 46, but the output voltages and current limits are completely different, with odd voltage levels, such as 6 VDC for the GPS board, . V for the wideband amplifier, and V for the power amplifier. ot only are the voltage values not standardi ed, the digital and analog outputs’

return paths are required to be isolated from one another.

Leveraging an existing COTS product enables a manufacturer’s design team to tailor the output voltages according to the requirement and separate the outputs into two isolated groups. This design approach helps the customer achieve a complete radar design with an integrated power solution in a single VPX chassis, all of which can be completed in a short schedule of less than three months from engagement to delivery, and aligning to recent open architecture acquisition directives, such as SOSA and MOSA. ■

Mike Eyre is Global Marketing Manager at Milpower Source in Belmont, New Hampshire.

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ShortVPX, small form factors, and SOSA

By John McHale, Editorial Director

Military system designers are finding that small form factors like 3U VPX are too big for and not a perfect fit for some reduced size, weight, and power (SWaP) requirements. A new small form factor – ShortVPX – targeted at these applications is being developed in the VITA Standards Organization (VSO) and discussed with The Open Group’s Sensor Open Systems Architecture (SOSA) Consortium. I discussed ShortVPX, SOSA, and the VPX ecosystem with Jay Grandin, vice president of product development at Annapolis Micro Systems, and Annapolis representative within SOSA and the VSO, in a recent McHale Report podcast. Edited excerpts follow. To listen to the podcast in full, visit https://www.buzzsprout.com/310502/8242589.

MCHALE: I attended the Embedded Tech Trends Virtual Conference in January where VITA and SOSA leaders discussed a new small-formfactor concept called ShortVPX. What is ShortVPX and how does meets the demands for even smaller form factors in military systems?

GRANDIN: One thing that people think about when they think of a smaller form factor is a less-capable system. What our customers are actually saying is, we really want the same processing capability, but we want it in a smaller box. The idea is to square after 3U VPX and rotate the FPGA me anine card, degrees. asically we fit it into a s uare instead of rectangle, [since] a square sits much better in a tube than a rectangle. Here we’re trying to figure out how to basically chop it off to get it to fit, and it turned out that we could actually do a lot of things we want with that. We ended up not moving forward with it at the time, but when I brought it to SOSA the response was positive and the

timing was right. So, we started investigating it more. Years ago it took a couple of ASICs to do what was needed by having an FPGA field-programmable gate array and an embedded CPU, or maybe a bunch of DRAM [dynamic random-access memory] on the board. All these different chips took up space. But, today if you look at a lot of the current ASICs there’s much more integration of all these functions. You can buy a modern FPGA with DRAM on the chip and a processor on the chip, and it’s all in one package. You don’t need as much board space anymore and can do a lot of the same functions that were being done three, four, five years ago with four or five different chips.

We thought this is a good time to actually take advantage of new technology, but also it’s time to look for a smaller solution. t’s time to make a ump to a smaller card it’s more feasible now, and we can have the same functionality as a 3U VPX card. It is a natural progression to reevaluate that plan. When we mentioned it to the standards organizations, everybody said that’s a great idea. So, we started rolling it out.

MCHALE: Please provide an overview of OpenVPX and how ShortVPX fits within the OpenVPX ecosystem.

GRANDIN: OpenVPX is a system where a bunch of cards plug into a common backplane. The 3U version is 100 mm tall by 160 mm deep so it’s a rectangle. The short version we’re talking about today is 100 mm tall by 100 mm deep, or a square as I talked about earlier. It really is just a short version of the same thing. One thing that was clear when we were talking to folks in the industry about a new form factor was that people were risk-averse. They don’t want to have a new backplane interface. They don’t want to have all this new stuff, because many of the small-form-factor solutions have not been widely deployed across the world. VPX has been well-tested and it’s actually deployed in many platforms. People understand how the backplane interfaces work and how the connectors work and how the mechanics of it work.

Jay Grandin

WE SEE SHORTVPX GOING

EVERYWHERE 3U AND 6U VPX GOES, GIVING INTEGRATORS

ANOTHER OPTION FOR A SMALLER SOLUTION,

IF THEY HAVE A UNIQUE CONFINED SPACE, LIKE SOME OF THE UNMANNED PLATFORMS HAVE.

ShortVPX is unique because there’s a lot of proven technology behind it, whereas a lot of other small form factors are either newer, they’re less proven out, they have new connectors, or they have other characteristics that seem risky to some folks. So, by keeping ShortVPX as part of the VPX ecosystem, you have the same physical connector, the same pinout, the same alignment hardware. You can actually even use the same backplane in some cases. These interfaces have also been successfully proven out to all kinds of rough environmental conditions like extreme shock and vibration conditions and extreme temperatures. This also extends to the complex backplane optical interfaces like VITA 66 and 67, which took a long time to get right.

By leveraging all those same interfaces and staying in the VPX family, we’re not trying to reinvent the wheel. inety-five percent of ShortVPX is the same as 3U VPX. We’re literally just chopping part of the card off. The 6U form factor has been around since the 1980s – a long time. The 3U size came around during the 1990s. So, we’re saying “It’s really time for a smaller version of VPX. Today’s climate – with SOSA – is a good time to get this going, and it seems like others are interested in this as well. With ShortVPX we’re introducing the third option in the VPX family.

MCHALE: VITA has another small-form-factor standard being considered by SOSA – VITA 74, known as VNX. How does ShortVPX compared to that? What are the differences?

GRANDIN: VNX is smaller than ShortVPX and does not have the same processing capacity as ShortVPX. You can get more done in a ShortVPX volume. With VNX you take a power hit and a volume hit. For some folks, there’s just not enough room to do what they need in that module.

For example, something like an RF tuner might be much harder to get in a VNX solution than a ShortVPX solution. ShortVPX is for those who want 3U VPX, but smaller. VNX is for those who want to go really small and lower-power.

MCHALE: How does ShortVPX compare to non-VITA small form factors like PC/104 or COM Express?

GRANDIN: Those are different in the sense that many of them don’t plug into a backplane, they plug into each other. Or they may have different connector schemes, whether or not you need to also plug in the backplane. The backplane standards are great for a lot of the [military] applications that want to swap out a card quickly, and so there are things are plugged together or they’re hard to get apart. Also, if you have a backplane application, the connector is actually very good. So, you can get very fast protocols through the backplane. With ShortVPX you can have many distributed topologies or switched topologies. We’re going to have all kinds of different ways to build systems for the backplane versus the others you mention as they are limited as to how they plug together.

Our military customers solve problems in very uni ue ways so they really need the flexibility that comes with having a backplane as the glue that holds everything together in the system. It’s not that PC/104 and COM Express designs don’t have their own use cases. It’s just that from what we’ve seen, VPX products are ruling the military market.

MCHALE: Speaking of the military market, if ShortVPX gets ratified, gets adopted by SOSA and others, what applications will it be designed into? Radar? Electronic warfare (EW)? Avionics? Something else?

GRANDIN: Those will all be candidates. Electronic warfare is often done in the tube or a pod strapped to an aircraft where space is tight and there’s lots of length, but not much diameter. ShortVPX enables for cards to be plugged in perpendicular to length of the tube. If you imagine a long toaster and put a bunch of cards in from the top, you can grow the backplane very long down the length of the tube, because it’s square, it fits better that way. t’s ust that U VPX is longer you need a much bigger tube to put them in that same direction. Often, a lot of people will put them in a horizontal tube, but then you can only get so many stacked together before you are limited by the diameter [and] the length of tube. Obviously there’s much less diameter than there’s length. In these situations ShortVPX will enable more processing capability while also meeting the physical requirements.

For radar, much of the processing is done near the antennas, so reducing size there is critical. Many radars are portable systems, so the smaller you can be, the better off you are in some cases.

We see ShortVPX going everywhere 3U and 6U VPX goes, giving integrators another option for a smaller solution, if they have a uni ue confined space, like some of the unmanned platforms have. Because they’re small and they’ve got other equipment and tech in there, integrators are challenged on fitting their processing boards into a

weird volumetric shape. Having a smaller square like ShortVPX creates more options for such platforms.

MCHALE: ShortVPX, like its larger brethren, will be ruggedized. Along those lines, will ShortVPX solve some thermal-management challenges or create more?

GRANDIN: We’re looking at how much power we can get out of a form factor that size. We can get 150 or 200 W out of a 3U VPX card. We’re thinking we’ll probably get north of 100 W out of a ShortVPX design, maybe 125, maybe even more. Right now we’re looking at using the wedgelock design. Once again, it comes down the proven VPX designs – 3U and 6U. Many of the mechanics will be the same with ShortVPX so there is less risk. Nothing is novel here, it’s all been used before, it’s just it’s little shorter. All that ruggedization testing and knowledge performed with 6U and 3U VPX is applied to ShortVPX.

MCHALE: We’ve talked about how SOSA is interested in ShortVPX for adoptioninto the SOSA Technical Standard. Can you please give a brief overview of SOSA and then talk about why you think ShortVPX is a strong candidate for adoption by the SOSA Technical Standard.

GRANDIN: SOSA is a standard that’s leveraging existing standards to create more commonality for the warfighter. Prior to SOSA, there were multiple standards for different services and applications, but there was little alignment between them. Sometimes they were competing and they didn’t work together. SOSA is not trying to reinvent everything. It’s the layer on top of these other standards, pulling from those standards when possible, redefining things in the standards as needed to make them interoperate, and really gluing it all together. That’s important to get everybody to work together. Board vendors like ourselves, like Annapolis, integrators, the government – they’re all represented within SOSA.

With SOSA we have all those different players sitting at the same table and figuring out what works for everybody. One of the big things SOSA’s trying to do is increase interoperability. In the past there’s been a lot of stovepiping of designs where there’s a custom backplane pinout and a custom box, and maintaining these systems was very hard because you had to go back to the person that built it to get updates. And if these things are on the field for , , years, that gets very difficult.

No one wants to change the system out because it took so long to get those custom designs made in the first place, so it’s very hard to upgrade that system. f you have a ten-year old CPU on there, well, that’s great, but if you want to put a new one in, it might be a whole different system design. SOSA has taken user-defined pins out of the VPX backplane and with the goal of having everything defined it’s downselected, [with fewer] options. In the VITA world, there are tons of options for how to do those different things. SOSA said we’re going to throw away most of those we’ll pick a subset so that your chance of interoperability is much higher by having a smaller number of options in the SOSA universe than the entire universe.

This is really the heart of what I think SOSA’s trying to do. It will push any updates or changes enacting the specifications that it builds on. f it redefined something, it would be a profile. t will push that back into V TA so that it’s still leveraging V TA. We’re not trying to take things and diverge from these other protocols. We’re actually improving the underlying protocols as well, in an effort to basically have everything still aligned for the other standards as well.

MCHALE:

Where does ShortVPX fit in? Why would that be advantageous to SOSA?

GRANDIN: Things are getting smaller, not bigger, especially in unmanned and portable systems. SOSA recognizes that – even for things like cubesats and other space

platforms. The idea is to really be on the forefront of technology and support these new standards and new places. SOSA wants to be the leader doing that, and I think it’s done a good job of that.

SOSA has a lot of industry veterans, who are very familiar with architectures and systems and standards and that sort of thing. These are the folks that are really driving SOSA forward while using and embracing new technology. ShortVPX is just part of that. SOSA has already adopted 3U VPX, so ShortVPX is the logical move for the smaller-footprint designs. As we mentioned before, much of the mechanical design and testing has been proving out already as part of the VPX ecosystem with 3U and 6U. This is the third option. Just one measurement changes – the length of the card – everything else is the same. ShortVPX also uses all the same profiles and backplane interfaces as 3U VPX.

That’s why [adopting] ShortVPX will be very quick because there’s not much else to do. It’s already done, since you are already using all those types of interfaces.

MCHALE: Will it have to be completed as a VITA standard before they can adopt it within SOSA?

GRANDIN: No, SOSA’s rule is we can do anything we want in SOSA. We prefer to have developed VITA standards, but they’re not going to wait for VITA standards. What most likely will happen is that it will be in SOSA the way it is and then V TA will adopt. For ratification there is a whole VITA process that takes time. Once ShortVPX is ratified as a VITA standard, if SOSA has already adopted it, then it just adjusts it in the next release of the standard. That way it won’t diverge. SOSA doesn’t have to wait for VITA to do anything.

MCHALE: When will we see companies like Annapolis release ShortVPX products?

GRANDIN: We’re looking at it now on our roadmap for next year. A lot of it comes down to when people are ready to embrace ShortVPX such as the power

supply vendors, tuner vendors, and others who would have related products. It could be done faster if it turns out someone really wants it. I think a lot of it is ust fitting it into our current workload on VPX. The best way to do that is to have some big customers request us to build a card for them.

MCHALE: Dr. Ilya Lipkin has said “The standards organizations are really a group of volunteers. So it all depends on the enthusiasm of your volunteers.” He says he’s had a lot of enthusiasm. Do you agree with thatstatement?

GRANDIN: Absolutely. One thing I’ve seen from our products and the programs we go into is we might have the same board, but we’ll have three of them with different input options for the three different programs, because everybody put a user-defined pin in a different place. So now ’ve got configuration A for this person, B for that person, and C for that

person. It’s the same exact board, just different build options. There would be different backplanes for each person’s different pinout. It was getting to be a little crazy.

SOSA came along and said, they’re not going to have more user-defined pins. That’s a big thing for me. So, we got involved to hone in on that. We did a lot of things to try and keep the power consistent, so you can take a card out and put another vendor’s card in. Everyone’s off 12 V, you don’t have different power loads, and so they’re actually swappable.

One might think, people will compete even more. People will compete more, but it also allows everybody to build cards that are more usable without excessive customization. We can build a card now and it will go in six systems, the same exact card and I won’t need to have six different test fixtures to test six different cards. t creates a more efficient procurement process as the government can get cards more uickly into the field.

That’s why everyone’s excited about SOSA, as it helps the warfighters have the latest technology in the field. Then when it’s out in the field they’ll upgrade things on a fiveyear time cycle versus a 20-year cycle. I think it’s a great effort. It’s grown tremendously over the last year or two and I think that’s just a testament to Dr. Lipkin. His leadership has really helped guide SOSA to a good place. ■

Jay Grandin is VP of product development at Annapolis Micro Systems, where he has worked for over 20 years. Jay is deeply experienced in modular open systems architectures, with regular contributions to SOSA and VITA standards development.

nna olis i ro ystems htt s anna mi ro om

SOSA

SOSA

Consortium Information

JOIN THE SOSA CONSORTIUM

Get involved and gain influence in defining open standards and certifications

Being a member of The Open Group gives organizations early access to the latest information and developments regarding open standards and best practices, and enables them to participate in The Open Group’s highly influential Forums and Work Groups. We provide a collaborative, vendor-neutral environment where member representatives can:

• Network with a world-class community of peers, experts, and industry leaders

• Have early access to information on industry developments

• Gain insight for future decisions from both major customers and suppliers of IT

• Influence outcomes that benefit their organizations

• Grow professionally, and enhance their credibility in the industry

• Learn best practices

The SOSA Consortium provides a vendor-neutral forum for industry and government to work together to develop capabilities and support for modular, open sensor systems.

The SOSA approach provides an agile and platform-agnostic open systems architecture for multi-intelligence C4ISR systems. The architecture incorporates both hardware and software components tohandle demanding processing and data requirements, ease system upgrades, reduce total cost of ownership, and promote competitive acquisition with minimal system reworks.

Contact The Open Group if your organization is interested in joining. One of our membership representatives will get in touch to provide you with the rules of engagement and membership information.

SOSA

THE OPEN GROUP: MAKING STANDARDS WORK

The Open Group works with customers and suppliers of technology products and services, and with consortia and other standards organizations, to capture, clarify, and integrate current and emerging requirements, establish standards and policies, and share best practices. Our standards ensure openness, interoperability, and consensus.

The Open Group is a global consortium that enables the achievement of business objectives through technology standards. With more than 800 member organizations, we have a diverse membership that spans all sectors of the technology community – customers, systems, and solutions suppliers, tool vendors, integrators, and consultants, as well as academics and researchers.

How SOSA Aligns With Current Open Standards

Sponsored by Aitech Systems, Pentek (now part of Mercury), and SMART Embedded Computing

One of the keys to the success of the Sensor Open Systems Architecture (SOSA) is that it was developed by aligning with current open standards and open systems architectures, including HOST, REDHAWK, OpenVPX, and similar specifications. The SOSA Consortium also works closely with such standards organizations as VITA, FACE, PICMG, IEEE, SAE International, Wireless Innovation Forum, and others.

Join our panel of industry experts – Duc Huy Tran, VP Global Marketing, Aitech Systems; Rodger Hosking, VP and Cofounder, Pentek, Inc., now part of Mercury; and Dinesh Jain, Product Manager, SMART Embedded Computing – who cover how the SOSA Technical Standard has adapted to and aligned with open architecture standards and how it has impacted the design of SOSA conformant hardware and software.

Watch the webcast: https://bit.ly/2WkEMnv

How COTS Suppliers Can Succeed Within SOSA™ Requirements

By Jeff Munch, ADLINK Americas CTO

The SOSA™ Technical Standard places numerous burdens on defense sector COTS suppliers. First, any solution must adhere to the consortium’s open architecture standards to ensure reconfigurable, upgradeable, and cost-effective S capabilities. Frameworks such as OpenVPX provide specifications and thresholds, but suppliers still face significant engineering challenges to ensure that solutions meet real military environment demands. OTS suppliers may lack such engineering resources and will need to import those resources from a third party.

ngineering a solution to industry standards is mandatory ust to play on the SOSA Technical Standard field. elivering additional value means tailoring products to specific client needs turning OTS into modified OTS because there’s more to the SOSA Technical Standard than updated OpenVPX ports and pinouts. ompliance and interoperability are only the beginning. As guiding principles, SOSA and OSA are about pushing performance within si e, weight, and power boundaries. They challenge suppliers to drive down sustainment costs and thereby enable defense groups to deploy more solutions for superior results.

EXECUTIVE SPEAKOUT

A L ’s ntel th Gen-based U VPX processor board, the VPX -TL, exemplifies this higher-level SOSA alignment. A L capitali ed on its long history in designing and manufacturing rugged, mission-critical embedded solutions to create this blade for demanding defense and aerospace applications. ollaboration with ecosystem partners such as ntel enabled A L to push performance and power-efficiency to new heights, validate designs more quickly for faster time to market, and enhance support to facilitate value-adds including extended life cycles. ecause A L speciali es in OTS, the VPX -TL, like A L ’s many other SOSA aligned offerings, can be optimi ed for specific deployment cases.

OTS suppliers have a tremendous opportunity to support the SOSA Technical Standard. Their challenge will be in surpassing the SOSA Technical Standard specifications and delivering on its strategic values in ways that balance specific optimi ation with broad standards adherence.

www.adlinktech.com

The SOSA™ Technical Standard Drives Radical Innovation, Including a Multi-Function 100GbE RFSoC Board

By Noah Donaldson, CTO of Annapolis Micro Systems

The SOSA™ Technical Standard benefits the warfighter in two primary ways

. nsuring interoperability between components and sub-systems

. Accelerating innovation

oth of these benefits deliver better performance and improved functionality to the warfighter’s mission.

nteroperability is ensured due to the SOSA Technical Standard use of existing standards OpenVPX, FA , etc. while further narrowing and defining re uirements.

For example, V TA OpenVPX currently provides do ens of U VPX and U VPX slot profiles. the SOSA Technical Standard restricts primary slot profiles to three U and six U profiles. estricting the number of profiles significantly reduces the possible backplane configurations, and promotes multi-vendor connectivity.

ually important is SOSA’s enabling of innovation. With SOSA . addressing hardware system management, power supplies, maintenance ports, connectors, bandwidth performance, thermal control,

www.annapmicro.com

and slot pitch, embedded systems designers are freed to concentrate on performance areas not specified by the SOSA Technical Standard.

One example of this from our own company ngineering resources that were formerly devoted to myriad backplane designs were redeployed to develop the W L STA ™ X the industry’s first SOSA™ aligned Gb thernet FSo board that combines analog and digital capability in a single U VPX slot. Formerly, these operations would re uire two or more boards to accomplish.

f the innovation has broad potential, the SOSA Technical Standard is organi ed to be nimble enough to incorporate the spec into a future revision.

An example of this is SOSA . ’s inclusion of a new U-S Short’ VPX form factor, which is only mm long versus mm for U . Annapolis was an early contributor and long-time advocate for this short form factor, which will now be uniformly en oyed across the military embedded supply chain. Limited-si e deployments such as unmanned aerial and underwater vehicles UAVs and UUVs , drones, backpack devices, and small satellites will benefit from this si e innovation.

QUESTION: How does the SOSA™ Technical Standard impact suppliers of commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware and software?

QUESTION: How will the SOSA™ Technical Standard benefit the warfighter?

How the SOSA™ Technical Standard Enables Seamless Sharing across Machines and Domains

By a id edyna , Chief Technology Officer a C r i righ

The very first two sentences of the o ’s Tri-Service memo state that v ictory in future conflict will in part be determined by our ability to rapidly share information across domains. Sharing information from machine to machine re uires common standards.

Lack of interoperability is a significant issue with proprietary, nonOSA solutions that impedes the ability to share information between machines. These solutions are designed to operate in isolation and, as a result, are difficult and time-consuming to deploy on platforms where systems and people must work together to ensure personnel safety and mission success.

One of the main benefits of leveraging the SOSA™ Technical Standard is that it ensures interoperability between sensors and systems. Sensor data and system output can be seamlessly shared between machines on the same platform, providing complete and accurate situational awareness. This capability is particularly critical in GPS-degraded or -denied environments, for example.

This OSA-enabled interoperability also facilitates seamless and rapid sharing of information from one platform’s e uipment with

EXECUTIVE SPEAKOUT

other platforms in a combat team, with command stations, or even across domains. Traditionally, tactical networks developed by each military branch have been unable to interface with one another, hindering the ability to share intelligence and uickly make decisions or issue commands based on said intelligence. To address this problem, the o has introduced oint All- omain ommand and ontrol A , a concept which aims to connect sensors from all military services into a single cloud-like network that will enable swifter, more informed decision making. OSA supporting standards, like the SOSA Technical Standard, will certainly play a key role in reali ing the o ’s A vision.

www.curtisswrightds.com

Modular Open Standards Architectures Usher in Change and Opportunity

By Shan Morgan, President, Elma Americas

Although work on the SOSA™ Technical Standard is less than four years old, it’s already having a profound impact on how both COTS hardware suppliers and their integrator customers approach the development of products and systems for defense sensor platforms.

For the hardware supplier, the common architecture means a fixed set of slot profiles and backplanes. This enables true OTS backplane designs that accommodate products from multiple suppliers, with a plug-and-play expectation. These backplanes form the basis of custom-deployed solutions with relatively modest updates, unlike past solutions that were ground-up custom designs.

For the board/payload designer, the SOSA Technical Standard brings both changes and opportunities. In the past, a supplier could often be assured of vendor-lock once they were designed into a system due to difficulties of designing-out a component the SOSA Technical Standard removes that. However, the SOSA Technical Standard makes technology refreshes much easier, thus increasing the market for new board-level products. Choosing the right combination of O ports is no longer an issue because they are all defined by the standard.

For the integrator, having a common hardware architecture to design their systems means they have a true, competitive market to choose the components that they need. No longer do they have to architect how product A will integrate with product B or evaluate how product C may impact their architecture choices. The integrator can spend less time and money architecting their hardware solution, reducing their time-to-deployment and program costs.

It’s clear that the SOSA Technical Standard has driven change within the VPX community. Already, many board-level and backplane products have been fielded and even more are introduced on an almost daily basis. As a key participant and contributor to SOSA, Elma has actively demonstrated functional platforms supported by a healthy ecosystem of partners and is ready to support the next generation of modular open systems.

QUESTION: How will the SOSA™ Technical Standard benefit the warfighter?

QUESTION: How does the SOSA™ Technical Standard impact suppliers of commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware and software?

Open Standards and Systems Create a Level Playing Field for All COTS Vendors

By Lorin Sandler, Director of Applications Engineering, Epiq Solutions

The intent of the SOSA™ Technical Standard is to create open system reference architectures that leverage modular designs with defined interface standards. A SOSA aligned system is created through a combination of those modules, both hardware and software, such that they perform a higher-level function. y using this standards-based approach, many systems that perform different functions can be designed by leveraging modules with common interfaces and common core functionalities. The result is the ability of vendors to leverage open standards and create modules with a high degree of interoperability and reuse across multiple systems. Open standards and systems mean a level playing field for all vendors – no more siloed technology solutions under one dominant vendor’s control. y eliminating vendor-lock, the standards-based approach increases competitiveness, makes generating innovative solutions more cost effective, and speeds technology updates and state-of-the-art systems to the warfighter.

As an example, a SOSA aligned software-defined radio S can be used in a wide variety of F missions such as W, S G T, or Tactical ommunications. A minimal subset of S specifications

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may fit multiple applications and be used in multiple application systems. When SOSA aligned, an S with improved specifications such as greater frequency range or channel count could easily bring new capabilities to either new or even existing F systems by either replacing or updating a module.

With the SOSA Technical Standard, OTS vendors can compete and innovate in ways previously unavailable. Standards allow vendors to engineer much more efficiently, to become more ambitious and competitive, which allows them to tap into opportunities that they may have never had access to before. n this way, the SOSA Technical Standard has the potential to increase opportunities in the growing OTS marketplace for products used in current and future SOSA aligned systems for many years to come.

www.epiqsolutions.com

A Huge Step Towards Real Interoperability

By Stefan Milnor, System Architect at Kontron

The SOSA™ Technical Standard is largely an evolutionary refinement based on previous standards intended to achieve the epartment of Defense’s holy grail of total interoperability between OEM products through open standards. OpenVPX attempted to move the embedded computing industry towards more interoperability than the Versa Module Eurocard (VME) standards. However, like V , the final implementation of OpenVPX had too many configuration profiles to make interoperability feasible. OpenVPX was closer than V to achieving interoperability but the large number of compliant profiles of them defined by OpenVPX was less than desirable.

One of the less difficult areas to codify into an interoperable open standard is backplane connectivity. Previously VME had assigned pins on the P connector. P pin assignments were fixed forcing embedded single board computer O s to match the pin assignments to claim compliance with this open standard. P however and later the extension adding a P connector allowed for O defined functionality on certain pins. This hindered interoperability as a backplane change would be required when transitioning between

different O products. OpenVPX partially addressed this mechanical disconnect but the standard still left a large number of possible backplane permutations. ore work is needed to achieve a higher degree of OEM product interoperability.

The SOSA™ onsortium is addressing this problem by retaining the most successful aspects of previous open standards while also reining in the O options and formulating tighter definitions of those options. From the o end user perspective, the more product interoperability that is available in any industry the faster, more efficient and cost effective upgrades are possible for deployed systems. y limiting the number of backplane profiles and eliminating any user defined pin assignments, the SOSA Technical Standard moves the needle closer to that holy grail of 100% interoperability between OEM suppliers’ products. Will we ever get there? Probably not to 100% but the SOSA Technical Standard should get us significantly closer to that goal.

QUESTION: How does the SOSA™ Technical Standard impact suppliers of commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware and software?

QUESTION: How does the SOSA™ Technical Standard build on open standards? Pick one and explain: VPX, HOST, FACE, CMOSS, RedHawk, other.

Ensuring Rapid Development and Deployment of Critical Systems for Mission Success

By Dan Manoukian, President LCR Embedded Systems

In the face of continually evolving threats, US national defense depends on the rapid development and deployment of products and technologies to counter those threats. This in turn requires the rapid development of embedded VPX systems that leverage advanced state of the art electronics and software technologies.

The SOSA™ Technical Standard enables the streamlining and standardization of these electronic systems using a COTS modular open systems approach (MOSA).

The now legendary Tri-Service Memo directing the Army, Navy and Air Force to share and adopt MOSA into new and existing programs, led to the SOSA Technical Standard and the convergence and coordination between these once separate efforts.That directive and the resulting widespread usage of this standardized architecture, promises to support demanding processing and data re uirements while delivering the additional benefits of competitive component acquisition and ease of system upgrade, reducing the total cost of ownership.

Most importantly, standardized communications protocols, and software and hardware interfaces, will for the first time enable data

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interoperability across domains for information sharing, which is critical during tactical battlefield engagements.

The SOSA Technical Standard establishes an underlying standard infrastructure that is agnostic in regard to the application function and where SOSA aligned VPX modules and their onboard electronics, provide the application. Mission changes and related system upgrades will no longer require lengthy, costly redesign and instead call for standard SOSA aligned modules from ualified suppliers.

In the strategic sense, the SOSA Technical Standard provides a standard framework with the ability to rapidly upgrade EW, radar, communications, SIGINT and ISR systems, which are crucial in keeping pace with changing US defense needs. Real time cross domain information sharing, and common system architectures provide a tactical advantage when most needed. Systems developed in accordance with the the SOSA Technical Standard will have a profound positive impact on the speed of system deployment and the success of defense missions for years to come.

www.lcrembedded.com

Accelerating Product Development Cycles with SOSA™ Standards

By Brian Paul, General Manager at Milpower Source

The VITA standards group has existed for many years now, developing the VME, VXS, XMC, VPX, and VNX standards as common physical- and electrical formats to enable the development of modular systems.

Meanwhile, in military systems, the need for faster development using open-architecture systems approaches became a priority, so the HOST, FACE, CMOSS, MORA, RedHawk and other initiatives were formed by various branches of the US military.

Over time, the participants of these groups joined with the SOSA™ consortium and started collaborating heavily under the SOSA Technical Standard initiative, preferring the VPX standard as the workhorse for military embedded systems. This was later formalized under the MOSA Tri-Service Memorandum where all new programs across the branches must be designed under the open systems architecture approach delineated in the SOSA Technical Standard.

SOSA members now participate heavily in the VITA committees to align and drive the VPX standards to better consistency, as they are

now the largest collective customer for VITA standards. Vigorous discussions are being held among defense contractors and equipment suppliers that represent different applications across the branches, finding common needs for interoperability and security in common VITA interfaces.

This allows all the supplier base to focus on bringing good technical solutions in a common format, allowing quicker development of new systems and a faster upgrade cycle for military platforms. In power systems and networking, we have found that the SOSA Technical Standard has allowed us to learn of new military market needs much more quickly than before, allowing us to deliver higher-valued solutions at a faster pace than ever.

QUESTION: How will the SOSA™ Technical Standard benefit the warfighter?

QUESTION: How does the SOSA™ Technical Standard build on open standards? Pick one and explain: VPX, HOST, FACE, CMOSS, RedHawk, other.

Adopting the SOSA™ Technical Standard is an excellent strategy to maintain defense superiority

By Rodger Hosking, Pentek, Now Part of Mercury

very warfighter must go into harm’s way, relying heavily on their leaders, teammates, and support resources to successfully complete each mission. ually important are their training, skills, and e uipment, which define small but critical advantages or deficiencies relative to the enemy that often determine the outcome of the engagement.

Two ma or ob ectives of the SOSA™ Technical Standard are accelerating innovation in S technologies and the rapid insertion of that new technology into deployed defense platforms. These goals are accomplished by the adoption of a few udiciously-selected portions of open standards, such as OpenVPX profiles, to satisfy the ma ority of military re uirements and to incentivi e competition among vendors towards these goals.

One example of the SOSA Technical Standard benefits to the warfighter might be a new W radar countermeasure upgrade to a fighter et that re uires new algorithms and more powerful computing resources to defeat or disable enemy assets on the ground or in the air. The W subsystem ac uires signals from the enemy and then transmits countermeasure signals to confuse, disrupt, disable, destroy, or avoid detection.

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As radar technology continuously advances in a leap-frog fashion to overcome the latest countermeasures, advanced signal processing techni ues and sensor capabilities must keep pace to protect military aircraft. The SOSA Technical Standard addresses two critical factors in this effort by reducing the time re uired to engineer and ualify each upgrade and then uickly getting it into a platform for the warfighter to use.

eplacing an open standard SOSA plug-in card with an interoperable one that adds the new re uired capabilities often means new technology can be deployed years earlier than using the traditional scheme, which typically re uires replacing the entire subsystem. Adopting the SOSA Technical Standard benefits across all o military services provides an excellent strategy to maintain defense superiority going forward.

https://www.pentek.com/go/sosase

With SOSA™ Technical Standard, Board Makers have to Think About Systems

By Dinesh Jain, SMART Embedded Computing

SMART Embedded Computing can trace its lineage back to Motorola Computer Group and the invention of VME as one of the first open standards in embedded computing. n fact, our head uarters are still in Tempe, Ari ona, in the same building that G occupied for many years. We welcome the upcoming SOSA™ Technical Standard V . release as a significant milestone in creating a common framework for transitioning sensor systems to an open systems architecture, based on key interfaces and best practices established by industry-government consensus.

Our early experience with V and subse uently pioneering technologies built around standards such as ompactP and AT A means we have demonstrated the benefits of open architectures in mission-critical programs. These include improved interoperability, reduced development time, faster deployment, and lower total-cost-of-ownership.

Our standards-based computing platforms are already powering military applications as diverse as weapons control, battlefield communications, UAV ground stations and airborne reconnaissance.

The SOSA onsortium is a testament of a community answering the call to work together to create solutions that support the best interests of a nation. As with any pro ect of such diversity and complexity, the devil is in the details’ and we look forward to working with customers on the relationship between SOSA and associated standards such as OST, AW , O A and V TA technical specifications. The interoperability and commonality of those standards and the integration of equipment intended to meet multiple standards is a key strength that SMART Embedded Computing brings to the ecosystem. Understanding system-level considerations and system integration, even when designing individual boards, is core to our engineering philosophy.

We are committed to the SOSA Technical Standard and look forward to working with partners to promote the specification.

SOSA™ Technical Standard benefit the warfighter?

QUESTION: How does the SOSA™ Technical Standard impact suppliers of commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware and software?

Meeting the National Security Challenge

By Tra i loc , C O of acific efen e ec rane i aren

An incoming missile. Its design recently updated. Is the jamming signal you need onboard or three years from fielding? The difference is SOSA™.

The SOSA Technical Standard is a direct response to the DoD mandate to implement Modular Open Systems Architecture (MOSA) Standards for future wireless military electronics systems, to speed the rate of technical refresh, lower costs, increase competition, and harmonize multiple missions concurrently. Systems based on Standards such as SOSA are a critical means to a rapid capability upgrade model that drives down modernization and operational costs.

As the service Secretaries affirmed in their anuary memorandum, and the House Armed Services Committee recommended in their uly AA odular Open System Architectures (MOSA)” section, the CMOSS/SOSA standard should be the basis of future acquisitions, going so far as to call the move to MOSA a warfighting mandate. n contrast to prior open standards, OSS SOSA is Government owned, covers both hardware and software

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transport layers V TO O A , is supported by all branches of the DoD, and has a growing vendor base.

Our country is encountering unprecedented security challenges from peer adversaries deploying advanced cyber and electromagnetic capabilities, placing greater demand on US and coalition forces to rapidly upgrade EMS mission systems to counter these threats,” said Travis Slocumb, O of Pacific efense. n a world of fast changing commercial technology, coupled with aggressive adversarial military expansion and challenging budget environments, SOSA Technical Standards are one powerful way to ensure weapon systems evolve rapidly and affordably to meet this national security challenge.” Pacific efense’s family of companies Spectranetix, Spear- esearch, and Perceptronics), are building advanced CMOSS/SOSA systems, enabled by advanced middleware, , software applications, and A L. Our solutions encompass lectronic Warfare, ommunications Systems, Offensive yber Operations, Signals ntelligence, Tactical etworking, and All- omain ommand and ontrol. ore information at www.pacific-defense.com

Supercomputing at the Extreme Edge

By Greg Maynard, Chief Technology Officer

We believe the SOSA™ Technical Standard enables deployment of new capabilities much faster than before, giving timely tactical advantage to the warfighter while also saving lives.

The SOSA Technical Standard is empowering us to deliver everhigher performing products that save lives and align with our mission to bring supercomputer-like performance to the extreme edge. As such, we feel grateful for all the hard work that’s been done by all committee members to help the entire industry design systems that are scalable, flexible, and will help reduce costs in the long term.

WOLF products employ the latest GPU and FPGA processors to support high performance applications to process video, radar, RF, and virtually any other kind of signal, using advanced algorithms and AI inference, while also supporting legacy analog and digital sensors in use today. The SOSA Technical Standard is helping us design multi-GPU applications that can scale-up or scale-down on a per-program or even a per-mission basis. We’ve never had that kind of flexibility before.

All new WOLF designs incorporate SOSA alignment while also enabling the support of legacy OpenVPX standards.

One great example of our early SOSA aligned success, was with a customer who wanted to support up to 100 TFLOPS of performance in a single chassis and, thanks to SOSA, we were able to design a system with a broad range of performance by utilizing multiple GPU-centric WOLF products that were all SOSA aligned.

We also believe the SOSA Technical Standard will help unleash a wave of innovation that will propel the entire defense and aerospace industry forward to create a warfighter that is more adaptable than ever before.

QUESTION: How will the SOSA™ Technical Standard benefit the warfighter?

QUESTION: How will the SOSA™ Technical Standard benefit the warfighter?

2021PROFILES

3U Plug In Cards (PICs): External I/O

Spectranetix 58

3U Plug In Cards (PICs): Power Supplies

Milpower Source 57

3U Plug In Cards (PICs): Payload Profiles – Compute-Intensive (SBC, FPGA, etc.)

Herrick Technology Labs 58

ADLINK Technology Inc 59

Curtiss-Wright ..................................................................................... 60

Epiq Solutions 61

Kontron ........................................................................................... 62

Pentek, now part of Mercury 63

3U Plug In Cards (PICs): Payload Profiles – I/O-Intensive (SBC, GPGPU, etc.)

EIZO 64

Herrick Technology Labs 64 Wolf Advanced Technology ............................................................................ 65 Mercury Systems, Inc. 66

3U Plug In Cards (PICs): Radial Clocks – Position, Navigation & Time (PNT) and Timing & Synchronization

Herrick Technology Labs 66 Spectranetix 67

3U Plug In Cards (PICs): Storage Red Rock Technologies 67

3U Plug In Cards (PICs): Switch Profile

Spectranetix 68

6U Plug In Cards (PICs): Payload Profiles – Compute-Intensive (SBC, FPGA, etc.)

Mercury Systems, Inc. 68

6U Plug In Cards (PICs): Payload Profiles – I/O-Intensive (SBC, GPGPU, etc.)

Abaco Systems .................................................................................... 69

6U Plug In Cards (PICs): Storage Red Rock Technologies .............................................................................. 70

Backplanes (3U & 6U)

Elma Electronic 70

Herrick Technology Labs 71

Enclosures: Deployable

LCR Embedded Systems, Inc. ......................................................................... 72

Elma Electronic 73 Spectranetix 73

Enclosures: Development/Test

Elma Electronic 69

Connectors & Cabling: Board Level Connectors (“VITA 66, 67, …” or “Optical, RF”)

TE Connectivity 72

Services and Tools: Integrated PIC Sub-Systems

Annapolis Micro Systems 74

The Milpower M4094 is a 3U VPX DC/DC power supply card that converts power from the MIL-STD-704 270Vdc bus to deliver the 12Vdc and 3.3VAUX supplies required by SOSA™ aligned systems. Using the new VITA 62.2 connector system, the proper clearances are provided to avert creepage issues and corona at high altitudes. M4094 is designed for high shock- and vibration-environments in applications like avionics and airborne mission computing. VITA 46.11 Tier II system management is now available.

MILVPX™ power solutions have been developed from the bottom up to support the rigorous requirements of today’s military applications – land, sea and air. Designed for defense applications and tailorable to meet your unique requirements, the MILVPX™ product family includes 3U, 6U and Custom form factors with up to 1.2kW of total power, multiple outputs and embedded EMI filters. Available in offthe-shelf and custom configurations, MILVPX™ is ready to deliver the right VPX power supply solution for your needs.

FEATURES

VITA 62.2 Compliant

Aligned with the SOSA™ Technical Standard Wide input range

Connectors are VITA 62.2 to increase breakdown voltage

Up to 800W output power

Remote sense

Fixed switching frequency (250 kHz)

External synchronization capability

Indefinite short circuit Protection

Over-voltage shutdown with auto-recovery Reverse battery protection

Over temperature shutdown with auto-recovery EMI filters included

3U Plug In Cards (PICs): External I/O

SX-430 Wideband Software Defined Radio

The SX-430 plug-in card is a U.S. Army CMOSS and The Open Group SOSA™ aligned high performance dualchannel/Full duplex Software Defined Radio transceiver (SDR) that operates over the 5-18000 MHz frequency range. Selectable instantaneous bandwidths (IBW) up to 160 MHz, significant on-board FPGA resources and Red / Black separation make this SDR an ideal fit for most Cyber / EW / SIGINT / Communications applications for use on Air, Land and Sea platforms.

FEATURES

Dual Independent TX and RX Channels Slot profile: SLT3-PAY-1F1U1S1S1U1U2F1H with VITA 48.2 and VITA 48.8 options

Programmable Digital Down/Up Convertors ADC and DAC resolution is 16 bits I and Q 5-18000 MHz Frequency Coverage with 160 MHz IBW 40 GbE ML2B real-time bus supported FPGAs: Zynq UltraScale+ ZU4EG (Red), Zynq UltraScale+ ZU19EG (Black)

Spectranetix www.spectranetix.com

 info@spectranetix.com  408-982-9057 www.linkedin.com/company/spectranetix-inc./ @PacDefStrategy

3U Plug In Cards (PICs): Payload Profiles –Compute-Intensive (SBC, FPGA, etc.)

3U VPX SOSA™ Aligned Software Defined Radio

HTL provides multiple implementations of Software Defined Radio (SDR) in the SOSA™ 3U VPX Payload profile. The SDR provide frequency coverage from 2 MHz to 18 GHz and can be frequency extended to 44 GHz with the external HTL44E. The 80 MHz IBW/channel SDR comes as a 4 channel transceiver covering 2 MHz to 6 GHz (HTLv-13), or as a 2 channel 2 MHz to 20 GHz (HTLv-23). Each channel can be dynamically switched between transmit and receive. Each channel can also be tuned either independently or phase coherently within a module or across multiple modules. The HTLv-63 version is a dual Tx + dual Rx 2000 MHz IBW/channel SDR covering 2 MHz to 20 GHz. Each channel is fixed as Tx or Rx, providing a total of 4 GHz IBW receive and 4 GHz IBW transmit capability. The 6 GSPS ADC/DAC, 1.4 million logic elements, 6.8 TFLOP processing and 4 gigabytes of memory make this product ideal for dual channel DRFM applications or 4 GHz IBW search with 4 GHz IBW EA. To provide more configuration options, the HTLv-63 RF up/down converter and the converter/FPGA

Herrick Technology Laboratories, Inc. (HTL) www.herricktechlabs.com

modules are available separately. Four of the HTLv-63 in HTL’s chassis provides 16 GHz of IBW coverage. All HTL SDR modules support MORA/VICTORY protocol interfaces.

 marketing@herricktechlabs.com  301-972-2037 https://www.linkedin.com/company/herrick-technology-laboratories-inc.

3U Plug In Cards (PICs): Payload Profiles –Compute-Intensive (SBC, FPGA, etc.)

ADLINK’s VPX3-TL is a SOSA™ aligned, robust 3U VPX processor blade powered by the Intel® Xeon® W-11000E Series processor (formerly Tiger Lake-H). It delivers a greater than generational improvement in performance for the enhanced data, graphics and AI acceleration capabilities required for next-generation missioncritical applications, including C4ISR, electronic warfare, signals intelligence, cognitive radio and radar.

The ADLINK VPX3-TL is SWaP-optimized and includes up to 64GB DDR4-2666 soldered ECC SDRAM; 2x 10GBASE-KR or 2x 1GBASEKX; one XMC expansion slot with PCIe x8 Gen3 to P2 rear I/O; USB 3.0 and SATA 6Gb/s for high I/O throughput. Options include up to 1TB M.2 SSD for secondary storage. The Intel® RM590E Chipset with UEFI secure boot and dual 256Mbit SPI flash supports Microsoft Windows 10, Linux and VxWorks 7.

The SOSA™ aligned design of the VPX3-TL offers embedded computing capabilities that are easily reconfigurable and upgradable, and provides improved interoperability that enables aerospace and defense solution providers to avoid vendor lock-in, and accelerate system integration with best-of-breed COTS solutions available on the market.

The VPX3-TL meets a host of MIL-STD requirements including temperature, shock and vibration, making it suitable for deployment in extreme operating environments. In addition to military-grade reliability and durability, the VPX3-TL delivers supply longevity to support long lifecycle programs through ADLINK’s comprehensive lifecycle management, and ensures uncompromised military-grade quality, and equally importantly, provides full product integrity and security via ADLINK’s in-house design and manufacturing.

As a member of VITA, SOSA™ and FACE™, and a global partner of Intel and NVIDIA, ADLINK adheres to DoD Modular Open Systems Approach (MOSA) principles, and remains committed to driving VPX advancements by adopting new CPU, GPU, and FPGA technologies. ADLINK is dedicated to continued development of its extensive, cost-effective, military standards-compliant COTS products, and leveraging edge computing, 5G, AI, and IoT technologies to enable a wide range of data-to-decision solutions that address increasing mobility and SWaP challenges, and complex military deployments.

FEATURES

Intel® Xeon® W-11000E Series processor (formerly Tiger Lake-H) SOSA™ aligned and VITA 46/ 65 compliant for quick to deploy

Up to 8-core processor with 45 watt TDP DDR4-2666 soldered ECC SDRAM, up to 64GB

Up to 1TB M.2 SSD optional

One XMC expansion slot with PCIe x8 Gen3 Ethernet: 1x 2.5GBASE-T to P2; 2x 10GBASE-KR to P1; optional 2x 1GBASE-KX to P1

DisplayPort to P2, supports DP++ with resolution up to 8K/60Hz Supports VxWorks 7, Linux (kernel 5.4 and higher)

Conformal coating protection and Highly Accelerated Life Testing ensures reliability

Wide operating temperature range from -40°C to +85°C; conduction cooled

VPX3-TL: 3U VPX Processor Blade with Intel® Xeon® W-11000E Series Processor

3U Plug In Cards (PICs): Payload Profiles –Compute-Intensive (SBC, FPGA, etc.) VPX3-1260

Optimal for high performance embedded computing (HPEC), general processing, and a variety of C5ISR applications, the VPX3-1260 rugged single board computer (SBC) delivers a fully-featured, all-in-one processing solution for your embedded system. This powerful board features an 9th Gen Intel Xeon E ”Coffee Lake Refresh“ processor, offering a huge leap in performance from previous Core i7 and Xeon processors, and almost double the thread performance compared to Intel Xeon D solutions. With Trusted Computing capabilities, unparalleled lifecycle support, and variants aligned to both I/O Intensive and Payload profiles, the VPX3-1260 equips embedded systems with a competitive edge.

Advanced processing capability

The robust VPX3-1260 leverages Intel’s first ever six-core processor to deliver 50% more processing power than previous four-core designs. The VPX3-1260 is the first Intel SBC to offer 10G and 40G Ethernet connectivity, providing customers faster data transfer and higher network productivity than ever before, as well as maximum flexibility to meet various integration requirements. What’s more, its local NVMe local SSD storage provides a 3-5x improvement in performance and up to 16x capacity over traditional SATA SSD interfaces.

Reliability in challenging environments

Maximize capability in the most demanding conditions faced by industrial technology and airborne, ground, and naval platforms. The rugged VPX3-1260 is built to VITA 47 standards for reliability with

a unique thermal design to provide the highest non-throttling performance in the industry.

Enhanced security for Trusted Computing

The VPX3-1260 offers Intel’s latest Trusted Computing features, such as Intel Boot Guard and UEFI Secure Boot, along with secured run-time software enclaves like Intel Software Guard Extensions (SGX). Implemented as part of Curtiss-Wright’s TrustedCOTS Trusted Boot security framework, the VPX3-1260’s security protections help safeguard your system against physical and remote threats.

Assured investment protection

The VPX3-1260’s processor offers Intel’s typical 15-year lifetime availability and is further supported by Curtiss-Wright’s 10+ year board availability and Total LifeCycle Management (TLCM) services to guarantee its longevity.

FEATURES

3U Plug In Cards (PICs): Payload Profiles –Compute-Intensive (SBC, FPGA, etc.)

Sidekiq VPX400

At Epiq Solutions, we push the boundaries of low size, weight and power software-defined radios (SDRs) that are based on an open architecture and standard form-factors. Using a standards-based approach to our product development frees up system designers to adjust all other aspects of their system. In developing standards, the SOSA™ standard intends to simplify development of mission-critical RF systems like electronic warfare (EW) and signal intelligence (SIGINT) in a way that makes these systems futureproof and gets them into the field as quickly as possible.

Our Sidekiq VPX400 is a great example of SOSA™ standards in action. Sidekiq VPX400 is a CMOSS/SOSA™ aligned, modular, multi-channel RF transceiver solution that enables rapid development of converged SIGINT/EW platforms while reducing slot count requirements, power consumption, and engineering-related cost. Its modularity aligns with the SOSA™ Technical Standard, providing rapid adaptability and its core SDR technology future-proofs applications by allowing quick adoption of emerging capabilities.

Sidekiq VPX400 provides a complete antenna-to-bits, phase coherent RF transceiver solution with multi-receive and multi-transmit capabilities in a 3U VPX form factor. Built on Epiq Solutions’ proven Sidekiq X4 RF transceiver, the RF front end integrates two Analog Devices ADRV9009 RFICs along with amplifiers and Rx pre-select filters. Sidekiq VPX400 has a wide RF tuning range up to 6 GHz, and can be configured for either 4-channel phase coherent operation at 200 MHz instantaneous bandwidth (IBW) or two independently tunable channels at 400 MHz IBW for a total of 800 MHz IBW.

This high performance transceiver solution includes both software and FPGA reference designs that support the Modular Open RF Architecture (MORA) specification, simplifying system integration into any MORA-compliant system. VITA 49.2 is also supported for command, control, and streaming digitized I/Q over 10/40 gigabit ethernet to the VPX backplane. With a foundation in modular open system architecture and flexibility, Sidekiq VPX400 is ideal for expanding system capabilities and functional agility in C5ISR, SIGINT and EW systems platforms while streamlining system engineering efforts and related costs.

FEATURES

Complete antenna-to-bits, multi-channel, phase coherent solution in a single 3U VPX card

Wide RF tuning range (up to 6 GHz)

4-channel phase coherent at 200 MHz IBW or 2-channel, independently tunable at 400 MHz

Unified open API for use across all Sidekiq products

Typical power consumption under 30W

Support for both PCIe and 10/40 GbE

MORA device layer allows any SOSA™ aligned host platform to configure and control the card

Supports VITA 67.3 for RF I/O through the backplane Air-cooled solution for prototyping, conduction-cooled solution for production Integration with GNU Radio, Photon, MORA, REDHAWK, and other frameworks

Conforms to OpenVPX slot profile: SLT3-PAY1F1U1S1S1U1U2F1H-14.6.11-4

3U Plug In Cards (PICs): Payload Profiles –Compute-Intensive (SBC, FPGA, etc.)

Designed to the Compute Intensive SBC OpenVPX profile

Building on Kontron’s successful VX305x and VX305C-40G SBCs, and designed in alignment with the SOSA™ Technical Standard, the VX305H-40G 3U OpenVPX Single Board Computer leverages the VITA 65 (OpenVPX) SLT3-PAY-1F1U1S1S1U1U2F1H-14.6.11 Payload, or Compute Intensive slot profile adopted by both SOSA™ and the US Army CMOSS Modular Open Systems Architecture programs to bring processing and network performance to 3U systems. Using the highly integrated 12-core Intel® Xeon® D processor, the VX305H-40G complements the 40 Gigabit Ethernet Data Plane (40GBASE-KR4) with a second 10 Gigabit Ethernet Data Plane (10GBASE-KR), a 10 Gigabit Control lane (also 10GBASE-KR), and a wide 8-lane PCI Express 3.0 expansion plane. It also provides an XMC site with an 8-lane PCIe Gen3 interface for adding capabilities such as front-panel I/O or large block storage. As a result, it is a SWaP-C optimized computing platform suitable for a wide range of applications. The ITAR-free VX305H-40G is an ideal choice when designing a high-performance sensor system using modular open systems architecture principals.

Typical programs:

• Radar, sonar

• Imaging systems

• Airborne fighter and UAV radar

• Programs requiring long term support in harsh environments

Rugged By Design

The high-performance VX305H-40G is available in both air-cooled and conduction-cooled Plug-in units as per VITA 48.2 Type 2, Secondary Side Retainer. This enables the VX305H-40G to sustain 70°C card edge temperature according to VITA 47 XMC support. The VX305H-40G is also available with a VITA 48 Ruggedized Enhanced Design Implementation (REDI) Two-Level Maintenance bottom cover option.

Additional Features and Advantages

System health and maintenance is a key differentiator of the VX305H-40G. Provided by the combination of a Kontron-designed VITA 46.11 compatible Intelligent Platform Management Controller (IPMC) for centralized system health and management, and Kontron’s Power-On Built-In Test (PBIT) package with its innovative “Reference Learn” approach, the VX305H-40G brings a new level of system health and management capabilities to rugged deployed systems.

FEATURES

12-Core Xeon® D processor, 1.5 GHz (2.1 GHz Turbo) 40 Gigabit Ethernet Data Plane, 2nd 10 Gigabit Ethernet Data Plane Dual 10 Gigabit Ethernet Control Plane x8 PCI Express® Gen3 XMC slot , x8 PCI Express® Gen3 Expansion Plane

Up to 64GB soldered DDR4 with ECC Extended Life Cycle and 10-year Silicon Reliability Air-Cooled and Rugged Conduction-Cooled versions Developed in alignment with the SOSA™ Technical Standard

Kontron www.kontron.com 

www.kontron.com/en/products/vx305h-40g/p156103

sales@us.kontron.com  888-294-4558 www.linkedin.com/company/kontron-north-america/ @kontron

VX305H-40G 3U Intel® Xeon® Processor Single Board Computer featuring 40Gigabit Ethernet

The Quartz® Model 5553 is a high-performance, SOSA™ aligned 3U OpenVPX board based on the Xilinx Zynq UltraScale+ RFSoC. The RFSoC integrates eight RF class A/D and D/A converters into the Zynq’s multiprocessor architecture, creating a multichannel data conversion and processing solution on a single chip.

The Model 5553 brings RFSoC performance to 3U VPX with a complete system on a board. Complementing the RFSoC’s on-chip resources are the 5553’s sophisticated clocking section for single and multiboard synchronization, a low-noise front end for RF input and output,16 GBytes of DDR4, 10GigE, 40GigE and gigabit serial optical interfaces capable of supporting dual 100GigE

3U Plug In Cards (PICs): Payload Profiles –Compute-Intensive (SBC,

connections and general-purpose serial and parallel signal paths to the FPGA.

Extendable IP Design

For applications that require specialized functions, users can install their own custom IP for data processing. The Navigator FPGA Design Kit (FDK) includes the board’s entire FPGA design as a block diagram that can be edited in Xilinx’s Vivado® IP Integrator. In addition, all source code and complete IP core documentation is included. Developers can integrate their own IP along with the installed functions or use the Navigator kit to completely replace the IP with their own.

The Navigator Board Support Package (BSP), the companion product to the Navigator FDK, provides a complete C-callable library for control of the 5553’s hardware and IP. The Navigator FDK and BSP libraries mirror each other where each IP function is controlled by a matching software function, simplifying the job of keeping IP and software development synchronized.

The Navigator BSP includes support for Xilinx’s PetaLinux running on the ARM Cortex-A53 processors. When running under PetaLinux, the Navigator BSP libraries enable complete control of the 5553 either from applications running locally or on the ARMs, or using the Navigator API control and command from remote system computers.

FEATURES

Supports Xilinx® Zynq® UltraScale+ RFSoC FPGAs

16 GB of DDR4 SDRAM

On-board GPS receiver

10 GigE Interface

40 GigE Interface

Dual 100 GigE UDP interface

Optional VITA 67.3D optical interface for backplane gigabit serial communication

Compatible with several VITA standards including: VITA 46, VITA 48, VITA 67.3D and VITA 65 (OpenVPX™ System Specification)

Ruggedized and conduction-cooled versions available

www.pentek.com/go/5553sse

Pentek, Now Part of Mercury

FPGA, etc.)

Model 5553 8-Channel A/D & D/A Zynq UltraScale+ RFSoC Gen 3

3U Plug In Cards (PICs): Payload Profiles –

I/O-Intensive (SBC, GPGPU, etc.)

Condor GR5-RTX5000

Single-Slot 3U VPX Solution for HPEC Systems

The Condor GR5-RTX5000 meets strict data integrity requirements for mission-critical applications with real-time GPGPU computing and graphics processing in latency-sensitive applications. Powered by NVIDIA Turing™ architecture, the Condor GR5-RTX5000 offers up to 9.4 TFLOPs of FP32 floating-point performance, making it ideal for AI inferencing, deep learning, sensor processing, and data analytics applications.

The Condor GR5-RTX5000 is designed for compute-intensive applications in C4ISR, Degraded Visual Environments (DVE), Digital Signal Processing (DSP), Electronic Warfare (EW), Signals Intelligence (SIG-INT), and Data Science projects.

The chip-down implementation of the GPU, along with SWaP-efficient electrical, mechanical and thermal designs, offers customers the opportunity to achieve maximum possible performance from GPU, even under extreme conditions. The card is MIL-STD-810 compliant and available in both SOSA™ & VITA versions.

FEATURES

3U VPX Graphics & GPGPU Card using NVIDIA RTX™ platform 3 output configurations supported; 4 outputs total: DisplayPort & Single-Link DVI-D

16 GB GDDR6 memory, 3072 CUDA® processing cores, 384 Tensor Cores, and 48 RT Ray-Tracing Cores

Dedicated H.265 & H.264 encode and decode engines (NVENC) Advanced shading technologies such as Mesh, Texture, and Variable Rate Shading NVIDIA GPUDirect® RDMA

www.eizorugged.com/products/rugged-graphics-and-video-capture/vpx/

www.eizorugged.com  rugged@eizo.com  407-262-7100 www.linkedin.com/company/eizoruggedsolutions @EIZOrugged

EIZO Rugged Solutions

3U Plug In Cards (PICs): Payload Profiles –I/O-Intensive (SBC, GPGPU, etc.)

3U VPX SOSA™ Aligned Graphics Processing Unit

HTL provides two implementations of the NVIDIA 5000 GPGPU on SOSA™ profiles. The first is the HTLv-GPGPU which is a SOSA™ Payload slot aligned GPU providing over 10 TFLOP processing, 3072 CUDA cores, 384 Tensor Cores and 48 RT Cores. The module provides 4 video outputs, 2x as 3G-SDI and 2X as CVBX. The PCIe interface supports over 128 Gbps of IO, sufficient to support over 2 GHz IBW of 16 bit IQ data.

The HTLv-PCIe-GPGPU provides the same 10 TFLOP, CUDA, Tensor and RT processing capability as the HTLv-GPGPU, though it is designed for a switch slot module profile. This profile provides 6 sets of PCIe Gen4 fat pipes (4 lanes) to the module and 8 lanes of 10 Gigabit ethernet. The PCIe

Herrick Technology Laboratories, Inc. (HTL) www.herricktechlabs.com 

switch enables a variety of combinations of the PCIe lanes to be interfaced to the NVIDIA 5000 GPGPU. The switch is also interfaced to an optional fiber optic interface to provide routing of signals outside of the chassis.

Multiple modules can be utilized in HTL high performance chassis mixed with RF SDR to create an RF Artificial Intelligence system.

Our 19 slot SOSA™ aligned chassis fully populated with these modules can provide over 100 TFLOP of processing capability.

marketing@herricktechlabs.com

 301-972-2037 https://www.linkedin.com/company/herrick-technology-laboratories-inc.

The WOLF VPX3U-RTX5000E module is ideally suited to the emerging HPEC applications for signal, video, RF, and AI inference processing. The VPX3U-RTX5000E module features an NVIDIA Quadro Turing TU104 GPU with up to 10.9 TFLOPS of peak performance, 3072 CUDA cores, 384 Tensor cores, and 16 GB of GDDR6 256-bit memory up to 448 GB/s.

The VPX3U-RTX5000E is available in a number of SOSA™ aligned slot profiles, including 14.2.16, 14.2.3, 14.6.11, and 14.4.15.

Connector options are available for VITA 67.3 COAX, and VITA 66.5 optical for x4 of PCIe (front or rear). Input and output signals are available for DisplayPort, CVBS, SDI, ARINC818, and CoaXPress.

FEATURES

NVIDIA Quadro Turing TU104 GPU with 10.9 TFLOPS peak performance x16 PCIe Interface (up to Gen 4) SOSA™ Alignment: 14.2.16, 14.2.3, 14.6.11, 14.6.13, 14.4.15 Option: 67.3 COAX Video Input/Output Option: Fabric switch for 10 GigE and x16 PCIe Gen 4 Outputs/Inputs for DisplayPort, SDI, CVBS, ARINC818, CoaXPress, custom Option: VITA 66.5 Optical x4 PCIe (Front or Rear)

Optional NTB on all PCIe switches

3U Plug In Cards (PICs): Payload Profiles –I/O-Intensive (SBC, GPGPU, etc.)

RFM3113

Microwave RF upconverter supporting secure, SWaP-focused applications.

The RFM3113 is an ultra-wideband dual upconverter, designed to align with the emerging SOSA™ standards for demanding electronic warfare (EW) environments. The rugged, compact dual upconverter pioneers system interoperability and upgradeability, supporting an increased and more diverse range of unmanned systems on various platforms including ground, airborne, and subsurface.

Offering low spurious RF performance from 6 to 18 GHz in a versatile, 3U form factor, the RFM3113 integrates dual up-conversion modules, image rejection filtering, and built-in LO generation. While compact and rugged, this module achieves low phase noise and a 1 GHz IF bandwidth. The RFM3113 is optimized for future upgradeability and is ideal for electronic attack, ELINT, and beamforming systems. The rugged build is suited for a variety of demanding environments with a broad spectrum of usability supporting greater performance in the field without sacrificing safety or reliability.

FEATURES

Ultra-Wideband – Excellent phase noise – High Dynamic range

Built-in LO generation

External LOs capability for EW versatility Two, fully independent upconverters SOSA™ aligned for greater interoperability SWaP focused

www.mrcy.com/RFM3113

www.mrcy.com  digital.rf@mrcy.com  866-627-6951 www.linkedin.com/company/mercury-systems/ @MRCY

Mercury Systems

SOSA™ Aligned Position, Navigation and Timing (PNT) Module

HTL PNT modules include the PNTRv3 and PNTRv23. The PNTRv3 is Snapshot 3 (Release 1) aligned and provides GPS receiver, GPS/CSAC trained 1 PPS & 100 MHz reference which can be sent to each slot in a SOSA™ aligned chassis. Both modules provide VICTORY/MORA interfaces and have robust PNT capabilities. The PNTRv23 provides additional robust PNT capability including AltNav. Contact HTL for further details.

KEY FEATURES AND SPECIFICATIONS

• Provides low noise 100 MHz reference using Low Noise Chip Scale Atomic Clock (LNCSAC)

• Integrated inertial navigation system (INS) with GPS

• 100 MHz outputs

• Output 1 PPS synchronous to 100 MHz

• On board antenna switching to devices

• 1 GbE Control Interface to OpenVPX Backplane

Herrick Technology Laboratories, Inc. (HTL) www.herricktechlabs.com  marketing@herricktechlabs.com  301-972-2037 https://www.linkedin.com/company/herrick-technology-laboratories-inc.

3U Plug In Cards (PICs): Radial Clocks –Position, Navigation & Time (PNT) and Timing & Synchronization

3U Plug In Cards (PICs): Radial Clocks –Position, Navigation & Time (PNT) and Timing & Synchronization

SX-124 Precision Navigation and Timing Card

Coming Soon!

The SX-124 PNT card is a U.S. Army CMOSS and The Open Group’s SOSA™ aligned 3U OpenVPX card for position, navigation, and timing. The SX-124 accepts reference timing inputs, GPS timing and position data, and IMU data. The SX-124 distributes eleven 100 MHz outputs and eleven 1PPS outputs in a phase coherent manner, provides network and precision timing information, time of the day, holds over timing reference in the GPS denied environment and synchronizes time stamps. It also provides enhanced location information. Further, the SX-124 can be connected to external IMU and DAGR sources, as well as a CRPA antenna. The timing and position functions of the SX-124 enable Cyber / EW / SIGINT / Communications applications for use on Air, Land and Sea platforms.

Card slot profile SLT3x-TIM-2S1U22S1U2U1H-14.9.2-n 11x 100MHz reference and 1-PPs outputs

Superior (low) phase noise performance

Internal 6-Axis IMU

Dual Gigabit Ethernet control plane interfaces providing IEEE 1588 PTP, NTP, and location data

Time/Frequency holdover from internal Chip-scale Atomic Clock (CSAC) with temperature compensation

GPS synchronized, high-precision timestamps to within 10 ns resolution

Spectranetix www.spectranetix.com  info@spectranetix.com  408-982-9057 www.linkedin.com/company/spectranetix-inc./ @PacDefStrategy

3U Plug In Cards (PICs): Storage

Add 16TB of data storage to your VPX system!

Red Rock Technologies provides a range of 3U VPX SSD products using COTS SATA and NVME SSDs with capacities up to 16TB and transfer rates up to 3940 MB/S. Air and conduction cooled options.

SOSA™ Aligned to use standard VITA 65 3U Payload Slot Profile: SLT3 PAY 1F1U1S1S1U1U2F1H 14.6.11. One or two OpenVPX Fat Pipes (FP) on Expansion plane:

• VPX P1 EP00 EP03 PCIe x4 Interface1

• VPX P1 EP04 EP07 PCIe x4 Interface2

NVME SSDs use PCIe x4 interface on VPX connector and connect directly to NVME SSD. Transfer rates of 3940 MB/S.

SATA SSDs use PCIe x2 interface on VPX connector. The PCIe interface connects to a PCIe SATA controller. Transfer rates of 500 MB/S.

Options with removable SSD modules are rated for 100,000 mating cycles for applications that require frequent removal of SSD. Removable SSD modules can easily be transferred between VPX system and PC.

Red Rock Technologies specializes in providing custom solutions per customer requirements.

FEATURES

Capacities up to 16TB

Removable SSD module rated for 100,000 mating cycles

COTS SSDs

VxWorks, Linux, and Windows support

Requires only +12V and +3.3V Aux power

No Tools option with easily removable thumbscrews

Military erase, FIPS140-2, FIPS197, TCG Opal options

www.redrocktech.com/products/vpx-storage-products

Red Rock Technologies www.redrocktech.com  info@redrocktech.com  1-480-483-3777

3U VPX NVME and SATA SSD Modules

3U Plug In Cards (PICs): Switch Profile

SX-153 Dual Domain 100/40 GbE Switch

Coming Soon!

The SX-153 100/40 GbE Switch is the next generation high speed, low-Size, Weight, and Power (SWAP), SOSA™ aligned switch. This 3U VPX plug-in card supports both Data Plane and Control Plane switching capabilities to facilitate dual real-time high-speed duplex switching in two physically separated domains, accelerating security certification. With up to 100 Gbps data rates, the SX-153 switch is an ideal fit for next generation Cyber / EW / SIGINT / Communications applications for use on Air, Land, and Sea platforms.

FEATURES

Aligned to CMOSS, SOSA™, and OpenVPX standards

Slot Profile: SLT3-SWH-5F4UG7U-14.4.14 and additional software configurable profile option

Front panel 2x 100/40 Gigabit Data Plane and 10/1 Gigabit Control Plane Ethernet ports Two independent Layer 2/3+ Gigabit Ethernet switch matrices for Control and Data Planes Speed, duplex, flow control, and power management on all ports 6x Data Plane Ethernet backplane ports: 4x 100 Gbps, 1x 40 Gbps, and 4x 1/10 Gbps Extensive CLI library for configuration, control, display, and troubleshooting

Spectranetix www.spectranetix.com  info@spectranetix.com  408-982-9057 www.linkedin.com/company/spectranetix-inc./ @PacDefStrategy

6U Plug In Cards (PICs): Payload Profiles –Compute-Intensive (SBC, FPGA, etc.)

Secure, actionable information when you need it, where you need it.

The environmentally rugged OpenVPX HDS6705 processing module provides smart, autonomous edge applications the on-platform security and multifunction processing capability needed to solve the most complex data problems in the most inhospitable edge environments.

The HDS6705 features the same AI-enabling Intel® Xeon® Scalable processor that powers modern data centers. Protected by Gen 4 BuiltSECURE™ SSE IP that is built in, not bolted on, it delivers secure, data-center performance that protects sensitive algorithms even if the platform is compromised. The HDS6705 is integral to developing secure, software-agnostic, embedded AI-capable processing systems that operate at the tactical edge.

• Manages big data workloads on physically and environmentally challenged platforms with optimized server-class processing technology

• Provides on-platform protections to safeguard against current and emerging threats for multi-domain operations: cryptography, secure boot and advanced physical protection

• Optimized for size, weight, power and cooling to deliver the best performance and highest MTBF for consistent and efficient operation – anywhere

FEATURES

Processor: Intel Xeon SP 6238T 1.9 GHz 22-core (Cascade Lake) server-class with AVX512 acceleration

BuiltSECURE Embedded Framework: FPGA complex to support secure boot and application load options

Memory: 96 GB DDR4 SDRAM with ECC

10/40 GbE on data plane; 10 GbE on control plane; x16 or dual x8 PCIe Gen3 on P2 and P5 expansion pl

6U OpenVPX, 1.0" slot pitch VITA 65/48/46; SOSA™ aligned Advanced rugged packaging for extreme environmental protection

VITA 48 cooling options: AC (48.1), CC (48.2), AFB (48.7), LFT (48.4)

www.mrcy.com  embeddedlga@mrcy.com  +1 978.967.1401 www.linkedin.com/company/mercury-systems/ @MRCY

Mercury Systems

HDS6705 6U OpenVPX Intel Xeon SP multiprocessing board

The SBC6511 is the industry’s first 6U SBC aligned to the SOSA™ Technical Standard. The innovative design combines the Intel® Xeon® E 9th Generation CPU (formerly known as Coffee Lake Refresh) with the Xilinx® Zynq® UltraScale+™ FPGA with advanced security capabilities to yield maximum processing performance and security in a rugged, single 6U VPX slot.

Multi-fabric architecture on the data, control, and expansion planes drove the design of the SBC6511. The board provides support for DisplayPort™ 1.2 outputs providing alignment with the latest VITA 65 OpenVPX standard. It also provides a dual 40 GbE data plane with RDMA, plus dual 10GbE ports on the control plane. Expansion is supported by the PCIe Gen 3 capable expansion plane and multiple PCIe Gen 3 capable XMC sites. Linux®, Windows® and VxWorks® operating systems are supported. The SBC6511 is also supported by the Abaco software suite: PBIT for early monitoring and reporting; CIBIT for non-intrusive ongoing and on-demand monitoring and reporting; AXIS Software Tool Suite for increased application performance; and Health Toolkit, which acts as a system monitor to collect and report the health of all elements in the system through the VITA46.11 tier 1 and tier 2 interface over IPMI.

The SBC6511 features the innovative Xilinx Zynq UltraScale+ FPGA with advanced security capabilities to help keep customer applications and missions secure. The FPGA is the root of trust in the board, giving users advanced security compared to “bolt-on”

solutions found in other designs. The SBC6511 supports the new Hardware Development Kit, which allows users to develop unallocated FPGA resources.

Abaco’s commitment to support the SOSA™ Technical Standard is demonstrated through its broad portfolio of 3U and 6U VPX boards, board sets and systems. See more products aligning to the SOSA™ Technical Standard, including the SBC3511 3U VPX single board computer also with Xeon E CPU and UltraScale+ FPGA, at www.abaco.com/SOSA.

FEATURES

Intel Xeon E-2276ME processor (formerly known as Coffee Lake Refresh)

Six 9th Generation Core™ i7 technology processing cores

Xilinx Zynq UltraScale+ FPGA (ZU7EG) with advanced security features

12 MB shared cache

Soldered DDR4 SDRAM with ECC and up to 256 GB SSD

Multiple data plane fabric configurations (10/40GE) with RDMA

Multiple PCIe® expansion plane fabric configurations

Rear & front I/O ports plus on-board expansion sites

Trusted platform monitor (TPM) and elapsed time indicator (ETI) Dual XMCs

Operating systems support for Microsoft® Windows, Open Linux® and VxWorks®

Available in air and conduction cooling

6U VPX Carrier with Removable NVMe SSD Module

Add 32TB of data storage to your VPX system!

With transfer rates of 3940 MB/S and capacities up to 32TB (2 x 16TB), the 6U VPX NVMe Carrier with Removable NVMe SSD Modules is a great solution for applications requiring frequent removal of SSD, fast transfer rates, and large capacities. It consists of two components: the 6U VPX carrier board with two PCI Express (PCIe x4) interfaces to VPX backplane and the removable NVMe SSD modules. Air and conduction cooled options.

SOSA™ Aligned to use standard VITA 65 6U Payload Slot Profile: SLT6-PAY-4F2Q1H4U1T1S1S1TU2U2T1H-10.6.4-n. Two OpenVPX Fat Pipes (FP) on Expansion plane:

• VPX P2 EP00 EP03 PCIe x4 Interface1

• VPX P5 EP16 EP19 PCIe x4 Interface2

PC kit is available that allows NVMe drive module to be used with a PC for data transfer. The drive module can be easily transferred between VPX system and PC. VxWorks, Linux, and Windows support available.

Red Rock Technologies specializes in providing custom solutions per customer requirements.

Red Rock Technologies

www.redrocktech.com

FEATURES

Capacities up to 32TB (2 x 16TB)

3940 MB/S transfer rates 100,000 mating cycles

Removable module with COTS NVMe SSDs

Requires only +12V and +3.3V Aux power

No Tools option with easily removable thumbscrews Military erase, FIPS140-2, FIPS197, TCG Opal options

www.redrocktech.com/products/vpx-storage-products

 info@redrocktech.com  1-480-483-3777

Backplanes (3U & 6U)

RF & Optical Backplanes for OpenVPX & SOSA™ Systems

Elma is a leading contributor to the DoD hardware convergence and tri-service commonality initiatives, providing technologies and product solutions aligned with CMOSS, HOST and SOSA™ initiatives.

As the leader in OpenVPX backplane design and manufacturing, our cutting-edge signal integrity analysis informs the designs of our high-speed backplanes, handling critical data at speeds reaching 100 Gbps (4 x 25 Gbps).

Designs support VITA 66 and 67 optical and RF apertures for connectivity including VITA 67.3 RF/Optical modules. As signal speeds and system complexities increase, look to Elma for proven designs. We offer the largest selection of 3U and 6U OpenVPX backplane profiles aligned to the SOSA™ Technical Standard, in slot counts from 2 to 12.

FEATURES

Slot profiles in alignment with the SOSA™ Technical Standard

Supports dual domain Ethernet switch 1/10/40 & 25/100

All control and data plane links are designed for 25 Gbps data rates and support 100GBASE-KR4

Range of aperture support for VITA 66.x and VITA 67.x RF and optical connectors

IPMC header for external chassis manager

Optional support for VITA 62 plug-in power supplies

Elma Electronic Inc. www.elma.com  sales@elma.com  510-656-3400 www.linkedin.com/company/elma-electronic

SOSA™ Aligned 3U VPX Chassis

Two SOSA™ Snapshot 3 (Release 1) aligned

3U VPX chassis are provided by HTL.

The HTLv-C-11 is an 11-slot chassis with:

• Four Payload slots

• Two PCIe Gen4 switch slots

• 100 Gbps switch slot

• IOSBC slot

• Radial clock slot

• Two power supply slots.

The HTLv-C-19 is a 19-slot chassis with:

• Eight Payload slots

• Two PCIe Gen4 switch slots

• Two 100 Gbps switch slots

• IOSBC slot

• Radial clock slot

• Three power supply slots

The VPX conduction cooled modules are in an environmentally sealed enclosure which is cooled via forced air flowing over external fins providing the capability to cool up to 125 Watts per slot at 60 °C ambient temperature. The chassis are designed for rugged environments per MIL-STD-810 and RTCA DO-160 profiles. The operating temperature range is -40 °C to 60 °C. Using available SOSA™ aligned modules, hundreds of configurations are available, including 16 GHz IBW spectral search engine, 8 GHz spectral search with 8 channel precision DF and 100 TFLOP edge computing. Additional details can be provided upon request.

Herrick Technology Laboratories, Inc. (HTL)

www.herricktechlabs.com

 marketing@herricktechlabs.com  301-972-2037 https://www.linkedin.com/company/herrick-technology-laboratories-inc.

Enclosures: Deployable

LCR Embedded Systems AoC family of rugged chassis and enclosures support VPX and SOSA™ aligned board payloads and are designed for widely available VITA 48.2 conduction cooled modules so you get the most out of the 48.2 ecosystem. Backed by a dedicated and seasoned team of packaging and integration experts who understand tough environmental challenges in defense electronics, the AoC line features air over conduction cooling that can be configured to meet your specific payload and I/O requirements. Designs support from 1 to 14 payload boards plus VITA 62 power slots or custom SFF power supplies. All chassis solutions cool and protect average per slot power dissipation of over 100W. The modular design allows configurations that easily accommodate removable drive bays and added space for optical cable bend radii. Conduction only configuration options are available where feasible. Custom I/O panels are designed for your I/O requirements and our backplane team will work with you from initial design phase through system integration. LCR works with industry best board partners to provide fully integrated systems ready for your end application.

FEATURES

SOSA

RF, Optical and 10GbE I/O backplanes, I/O panels and connector options

Air/conduction or passive conduction options for over 100W per slot cooling performance

Compact, lightweight designs for VITA 48.2 boards

Based on field proven designs for mission critical applications

Intended for air, land and sea equipment in harsh environments

Designed to meet a variety of MIL-STD-810, MIL-STD-461, MIL-STD-167 and MIL-STD-901D test methods.

www.lcrembeddedsystems.com/products/chassis-enclosures-rugged-or-lab-grade-any-form-factor/

LCR Embedded Systems www.lcrembeddedsystems.com

AoC3U Series of Air over Conduction Cooled VPX Chassis

SOSA™ ALIGNED INTERCONNECT SOLUTIONS

TE Connectivity (TE) has been a leader in interconnect solutions for OpenVPX and an active member of the SOSA™ Consortium. TE has several products that are aligned with the SOSA™ Technical Standard and targeted for design for next-generation sensor systems and rugged embedded computing applications.

TE’s MULTIGIG RT connector, the standard for VITA 46, represents a huge step forward in the world of rugged computing and C5ISR enabling technology. The connector series supports speeds to 32+ Gb/s, providing a comfortable performance margin in VPX applications.

The new VITA 87 Mil Circular 38999 Fiber Optic Interconnect product line from TE offers a much higher density Mil Circular fibers option that is more aligned with industry architecture needs. These new architectures require considerably higher density to fit into industry-standard card slots. These products will ensure supply and enable customers to confidently design this product into their next-generation systems.

TE’s MIL-DTL-38999 and 38999-style connectors are milqualified Series I, III, and IV connectors, and come in a wide array of configurations, materials, and finishes to help meet the needs of harsh applications. Because of the widespread popularity of

38999 Series III connectors, we have also used this form factor for designs to meet a variety of configurations beyond those of MIL-DTL-38999.

FEATURES

VITA 46: MULTIGIG RT Connectors

– Data transfer rates to 32+ Gb/s

– Modular design with backward interoperability

– Ruggedized multipoint contact system meets VITA vibration standards

VITA 87: Mil Circular 38999 Fiber Optic Interconnects

– Can accommodate most next-generation high density ports and mating card slots

– Standard interconnect system uses 38999 circular backshells

– 12 and 24 fiber options available, resulting in potentially the highest density in the industry

MIL-DTL-38999 Series III Connectors

– Standard circular connectors with power contacts rated up to 23A

– High density layouts with up to 187 data connections

– Offers grounded plug for superior EMI shielding

SX-922 Series Front Loading Chassis

The Spectranetix SX-922 series is a front loading chassis family in alignment with the U.S. Army CMOSS, the Open Group SOSA™ and 3U OpenVPX standards. It is designed to meet MIL-STD-810G and MIL-STD-464C. Sporting a backplane containing 100 Gbps capable fat pipes, the chassis supports high performance SIGINT / EW / COMMS applications and accommodates up to eight payload cards in the 13-slot model, an active Ethernet switch card, an active timing card, and an active power supply card. The family of SX-922 chassis products consists of the following standard backplane slot selections: 7 slots, 11 slots, and 13 slots, each with custom configurable options. The 11 and 13 slot variants can be mounted in a standard 19" rack.

Spectranetix www.spectranetix.com



FEATURES

CMOSS/SOSA™ aligned, OpenVPX 3U chassis with 7, 11, or 13 slot backplane configurations

Highly efficient VITA 48.2 thermal design supports conduction cooled 3U cards 100 Gb/s backplane to support high data throughput and response time I/O panels on any of the chassis can be modified for specific mission needs Designed to meet MIL-STD-810G and MIL-STD-464C Built-in front panel cryptographic key fill, ignition key fill, and zeroize switch Accommodates four, six, or eight payload cards, depending on model

info@spectranetix.com  408-982-9057 www.linkedin.com/company/spectranetix-inc./ @PacDefStrategy

Enclosures: Development/Test

CompacFrames – Development Improved & Simplified

Elma’s family of all-new CompacFrames is a next-generation platform designed to accelerate development and test of plug-in cards (PICs) aligned to the SOSA™ Technical Standard and VITA 65 OpenVPX standards.

With an updated, lightweight construction, the unit is tilted up 5 degrees for easier viewing and plug-in cards insertion. User interfaces are designed for easy access, simplifying and reducing design time, and the integrated carrying handle ensures portability.

The platforms come in three different standard sizes: a slimline version accommodates open standards-based backplanes of up to 4 slots; the mid-range version supports up to 8 slots; and – in a first to market – a development platform that will hold up to 5 single-slot 3U VPX backplanes for VITA 48.8 air flow-through (AFT) cooling of plug-in cards.

FEATURES

Choose from 3 different sizes and configurations, with support up to 8 slots Units can be outfitted with guides for air- or conduction-cooled or air flow-through (AFT) boards

Choose from Elma's wide range of standard OpenVPX and SOSA™ aligned backplane configurations

Choose from the largest collection of VPX power & ground only backplanes 300W or 1400W ATX power supply with option for plug-in VITA PSU

Includes front panel reset and power switches, voltage LEDS, monitoring and test points

Optional plug-in or built-in VITA 46.11 chassis manager

https://bit.ly/ElmaTestDev

Elma Electronic Inc. www.elma.com  sales@elma.com  510-656-3400 www.linkedin.com/company/elma-electronic @elma_electronic

Services and Tools: Integrated PIC Sub-Systems

100GbE SOSA™ Aligned Development Kit – WS3A01-S1

This next-generation 3U OpenVPX Benchtop Development Platform is both SOSA™ aligned and 100Gb Ethernet capable, and is designed from the ground up to economically speed development of 100GbE Systems that are aligned with SOSA™ Technical Standard 1.0.

The stock Kit includes a 3U Chassis, Backplane, Chassis Manager, FPGA Board with Gen 3 RFSoC Mezz Card, 100GbE Switch, SBC, VITA blocks, and MIL-DTL-38999 cable.

For a virtual or in-person Demo, contact us.

OVERALL SYSTEM FEATURES

•Front-loading, air-cooled system with conduction-cooled boards

•Seven 3U OpenVPX slots with SOSA™ aligned backplane profiles

– One 14.6.11 Payload

– Three 14.6.11 Empty Payload (for expansion)

– One 14.2.16 I/O-intensive SBC

– One 14.4.14 100GbE Switch

– One VITA 62 Power Supply – 12V-Heavy

• 25 Gbps Line Rates on Data and Expansion Planes

– 25/40/100Gb Ethernet

– SDR/DDR/QDR/EDR InfiniBand

– Gen 3/4 PCI Express

– Custom protocols up to 25Gbps per lane

•VITA 66.5C and VITA 67.3C for payload slots

•Four MIL-DTL-38999 SOSA™ aligned circular connectors with 19 RF connections, and one MIL-DTL-38999 Cable

•Multiple levels of hardware and software security

CHASSIS MANAGER

•SOSA™ aligned and VITA 46.11 compliant

•Enables control, maintenance, and security functions

•One Xilinx® Zynq® UltraScale+™ MPSoC (XCZU5EG)

•Supports MIL-STD-1553

100Gb ETHERNET SWITCH

•40/100Gb Ethernet Data Plane Switch – 6.4Tb/s switching capacity – Industry-leading, true cut through latency

•1/10/25/40/100Gb Ethernet Control Plane Switch – Layer-2 Wire-Speed Switching Engine

•Two Xilinx Zynq UltraScale+ MPSoCs (XCZU5EG)

FPGA PROCESSOR + RFSoC I/O CARD

•One Xilinx Virtex® UltraScale+ FPGA (XCVU7P)

•One Xilinx Zynq UltraScale+ MPSoC (XCZU7EV)

•One Xilinx Zynq UltraScale+ Gen 3 RFSoC (ZU47DR)

• ADC: 4 Channel, 5.0+GSps Sample Rate, 14 bit Resolution

• DAC: 4 Channel, 10.0+GSps Sample Rate, 14 bit Resolution

SINGLE BOARD COMPUTER (SBC)

•Intel® Xeon® D-1559

•32G DRAM

•60GB M.2 SSD/Linux – Standard

APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT

•Standard support delivered with all systems

•Optional full Board Support Package

– Enables customization of Zynq PS, PL for security

– Provides fast and robust HDL-based environment

www.annapmicro.com/products/WS3A01-S1