The recent surge in demand for adaptive cruise control (ACC) and commercial autonomous vehicles has drawn a lot of attention to these innovative applications. Based on pulsed laser diodes and hybrid receivers with Avalanche Photodiodes (APDs) for laser range finding (LRF), these systems are often classified under the general acronym LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging).

As aerospace and defense manufacturing becomes increasingly digitized—from the earliest design stages to the factory floor and beyond—data accuracy is fundamental to realizing the speed, quality and repeatability promised by interconnected and automated computer systems and manufacturing machines.

Communication on the battlefield is a life-or-death matter. You can't take chances with RF devices or power units malfunctioning or failing. A soldier's life may depend on how well you designed and tested your product. Will it function in temperature extremes, after physical shocks, and with low battery power? Where will it break or fail, and why? How can that be prevented?

Sintered fiber metal composites are used in aircraft as an acoustic media within environmental ducting, inlet and exhaust systems. The material can be engineered to meet specific acoustic attenuation and noise reduction goals within these applications. Sintered metal fiber composites have proven reliable and effective since the 1950's, but continue to deliver new value through ongoing investment and new use cases.

The Centro de Astrobiología (CAB), a joint center of Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas and the Instituto Nacional de Tecnica Aeroespacíal (CSIC-INTA), designed and built the weather monitoring station contributed by the Spanish government as part of the payload of the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) rover, Curiosity, which landed on Mars in August 2012 (Figure 1).

The increasing demand for higher data rates in telecommunications and higher resolution in industrial systems is pushing the frequency of operation higher for the electronics that support them. Many of these systems operate over a wide frequency spectrum, and further increased bandwidth requirements are a common request for new designs. Across many of these systems there is a push to use one signal chain for all frequency bands.

In recent years there has been a trend towards the wider use of COTS (Commercial Off The Shelf) equipment in space missions. This trend has been mainly driven by the restrictions in R&D budgets and a growing demand for shorter design cycles. Funding Agencies are encouraging designers of spacecraft systems to identify and overcome the obstacles that previously prevented the use of COTS products for space missions.