Earl Integrated Power & Controls, a division of Earl Industries (Portsmouth, VA), was enlisted by the U.S. Navy to create an innovative, vertically mounted voice-data-video (VDV) network node for the Ford Class Aircraft Carrier. One of the major challenges in this endeavor was that the rugged uninterruptible power supply (UPS) required to power the system would have to be equally innovative, owing to the node’s vertical orientation; the need for extended battery backup runtime; quick replacement of the unit’s power factor correction board; access to the Ethernet switch; and limited space availability.

NATO Special Operations Forces Headquarters (NSHQ) recently selected Mutualink as its official interoperable communications platform. Using Mutualink’s ruggedized Valence™ series platform, NATO SOF coalition partners will be equipped with advanced anywhere, anytime, interoperable communications and information sharing capability. This next generation capability securely links warfighters and command and control elements with each other as needed across different communications systems and allows them to share real time ISR, including files, maps, system views and full motion video (FMV) on the fly. For NATO SOF, quick reaction time and agile response capabilities are a must. Often first on the ground in challenging operational environments, harnessing collaborative multi-national information and intelligence sharing and seamless communications capability is critical.

Ongoing efforts to increase fuel efficiency, tactical mobility, and payload capacity in aerospace design have driven engineers to find numerous ways to reduce mass through the extensive use of lightweight materials such as composites, aluminum, and plastics. Use of these lightweight materials can create other issues, however, such as finding safe and reliable ways to fasten assemblies that provide complete assurance of joint integrity under the severe conditions of shock, vibration and thermal cycling common in aerospace applications.

Since the 1970’s, military aircraft avionics systems have communicated via the MIL-STD-1553 bus. This has proven to be a very effective method, and is still in widespread use today. MIL-STD-1553 is a time division multiplexed command and response bus with a bus controller initiating all communications on the bus. The bus operates at 1 Mbps, and is dual redundant for reliable operation.

AdvancedTCA (ATCA) continues to evolve to meet not just the market demands for the telecom central office, but networking, data center, medical, and military communications applications. The two main goals that ATCA suppliers have been trying to solve often conflict with each other: offering more performance in less space, while meeting the specific market and compliance requirements for each industry.

With more than a year under its belt since it was officially ratified by PICMG in March of 2011, CompactPCI Serial (PICMG CPCI-S.0) has proven to be a good example of how an industry standard can be upgraded to meet the needs of evolving computing parameters while protecting the historical investments tied to the original architecture. The fact that it has found a new home in a wider variety of application environments is just one more benefit that this new computing standard offers.

Embedded system designers often find themselves trapped by CPU design choices they made years earlier, since switching costs can be astronomical. Hardware development often involves processor-specific interface chips and board design. Software switching costs can be even more onerous, since CPU architectures drive the purchase of development tools and the requirement for customized software. However, a couple of industry trends have opened up the CPU platform, and system designers are gaining the ability to mix and match CPU suppliers or even change CPU instruction sets to optimize products across a wider range of applications.