Innovators Awards 2019 Military and Aerospace Electronics Intelligent Aerospace

Estimated reading time: 14 minutes

The ATS-3100 VRS tactical radio test and measurement set from Astronics Test Systems in Irvine, Calif., is built on a modular platform, and addresses any tactical radio: legacy, present, and future. It is a suitable replacement for the AN/GRM-122. The company's TPS process can help users develop, deploy, and maintain the TPS according to these supplier prerequisites, including their individual and proprietary best practices for tactical radio test. Its open architecture offers long-term sustainability.

The military-grade high-density 16-gigabyte DDR4 from Mercury Systems in Andover, Mass., is a high density double data rate fourth-generation synchronous dynamic random-access memory (DDR4 SDRAM) device that comes in a 16-by-23-millimeter ball grid array (BGA) package that offers an 87 percent circuit boardsavings compared to commercial memory. The product was designed using a new advanced design technology that doubles the number of the devices embedded in a package without compromising performance or reliability. Conventional three-dimensional packaging technologies embed multiple memory devices to meet the processing demands of space-constrained military systems.

The ZE-VC rugged small-form-factor embedded video capture computer from ZMicro in San Diego is for airborne intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) applications. It integrates an 8th Generation Intel Core i7 processor to deliver quad core performance with maximum turbo frequency of 4.20 Ghz. It includes the Blackmagic Decklink Duo 2 PCI Express capture and playback card, and features four independent 3G-SDI connections that support SDI formats in SD and HD resolution as fine as 1080 pixels to provide the flexibility of four separate cards in one. At the heart of the ZE-VC is the Intel NUC board, a 4-by-4-inch commercial motherboard that provides the processor, memory, graphics, storage, peripheral interfaces, LAN, and expansion capabilities.

The D-Frame OpenVPX development platform from Elma Electronic in Alameda, Calif., is a development chassis is for OpenVPX and SOSA-aligned board and system design. It helps design systems for use in critical defense applications. Designed for low-slot-count payloads, the D-Frame can be configured to the exact board count required. In addition, suppliers have developed backplane products targeting these lower slot count applications and so off the shelf backplanes may be used in the D-Frame without wasting space for ten or more unused slots. Secure hatch locking screws ensure a tight reliable fit and a carrying handle completes a clean and professional briefcase look.

The TGA2222 32-to-38 GHz 10-Watt GaN amplifier from Qorvo Inc. in Greensboro, N.C., is a wide band power amplifier monolithic microwave integrated circuit(MMIC) that provides 40 dBm (10 W) of saturated output power and 16 dB of large signal gain while achieving better than 22 percent power-added efficiency. Built on Qorvo’s gallium nitride on silicon carbide (GaN-on-SiC) technology, the TGA2222 delivers this extended RF power in a smaller die, which reduces size, weight, and number of components to create a simple but powerful solution for radar and electronic warfare (EW) applications.

The V3-1703 NXP Layerscape LS1043A Quad A53 single-board computer from Curtiss-Wright Defense Solutions is an Arm-based, safety-certifiable single boardcomputer with an NXP Layerscape LS1043A quad-core processor that delivers Arm’s performance per Watt to optimize performance and SWaP. Arm processors, like the V3-1703’s LS1043A, deliver the best power-to-performance ratio compared to Intel and Power Architecture processors, allowing the V3-1703 to balance performance requirements with power consumption constraints. Deterministic, non-throttling performance: like Power Architecture processors (and unlike Intel processors), the V3-1703’s Arm processor delivers deterministic, dependable performance in extreme temperatures.

The ZX1C 18 - Airborne Server from ZMicro features an 18-inch short-depth chassis and weighs less than 13 pounds to offer a small, light form factor that can accommodate small ISR aircraft without compromising server performance. The ZX1C 18 uses carbon fiber materials, which are stronger than steel and a fraction of the weight. It has a modified 750-Watt DC power supply, lightweight support brackets, and integrates ZMicro’s TranzPak 1 removable data storage modules which use M.2 NVMe solid-state drives and are much smaller than traditional 2.5-inch drives and about four times faster than SATA-3 solutions. The server meets full MIL-SPEC compliance for shock, vibration, temperature, EMI/EMC, and altitude specifications. It is certified for MIL-STD-461F, DO-160G, and MIL-STD-810G.

Silver awards

Innovators 3 AngelusThe MACHFORCE D38999-style high-speed 10G data connector from The Angelus Corp. in Sussex, Wis., is designed for rugged aerospace and defense applications. It offers ten 10G Ethernet ports; anti-decoupling ring for easy connect and disconnect with a gloved hand; and quick termination and field repairable with quick access to terminated wires. The high speed module has a unique rectangular pin configuration that maximizes shell size density and increases the amount of data transmitted per connector. It offers continuous signal integrity through impedance control and data pair isolation. Its aluminum fins allow for twisted pairs to be packed in closer to maximize shell data density, while protecting signal integrity and proper application performance. The connector’s optimized electrical performance allows for as many as five disconnects.

The Raven-Strike rugged, embedded computer from Systel Inc. in Sugar Land, Texas, is for modern fighting vehicles. It is a line replaceable unit designed for centralized ingest and data fusion of all vehicle sensors. This allows for the ability to collect, process, exploit, and disseminate critical data seamlessly at near real-time speeds. Raven-Strike acts as an autonomous-enabling hardware backbone, supporting the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Deep Learning (DL) to shift the workload from man to machine and optimize and enable critical combat capabilities. Raven-Strike features dual Intel Xeon scalable processors and an NVIDIA GPGPU for edge computing performance in a highly contested, forward-deployed environment.

The EnsembleSeries HDS6605 OpenVPX AI processing blade from Mercury Systems is for artificial intelligence (AI) and other compute-intensive general processing workloads in sensor fusion, complex command and control, and deep-learning applications. Second-generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors feature Intel Deep Learning Boost, which extends Intel Advanced Vector Extensions-512 (AVX-512) to accelerate inference applications like speech recognition, image recognition, language translation, and ject detection, and more. As many as four HDS6605 blades can be clustered via Intel’s new ultrapath interconnect (UPI) for a truly integrated, low-latency non-uniform memory access (NUMA) server architecture that solves complex mission compute problems in real-time.Page 2 of 3

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