Well into its third decade of widespread deployment, VME adopted the new VXS gigabit serial interface, clearly representing the most significant leap in backplane data transfer rates throughout its entire history. Because VXS delivered such a dramatic improvement in embedded system performance, the use of gigabit serial technology was extended to create VPX. The OpenVPX initiative followed shortly thereafter, as risk-averse government agencies mandated the need for industry-wide standards. The hallmark of any successful standard is that it continues to evolve with technology, and none offers a better example than VME’s evolution to VXS and VPX.

In today’s world of high-speed A/D converters operating in the gigahertz range, real-time signal recording has become a challenging task that requires specialized hardware and intelligent application software. When designing a real-time recorder capable of streaming sustained data to disk at rates of up to 5 GB/sec and higher, the system developer has to consider the limitations presented by the recorder’s operating and file systems, the limitations of disk drive technology, the hardware interfaces, and the RAID controller technology.

FPGAs have become an increasingly important resource for software radio systems. Programmable logic technology now offers significant advantages for implementing software radio functions such as DDCs (Digital Downconverters). Over the past few years, the functions associated with DDCs have seen a shift from being delivered in ASICs (Application-Specific ICs) to operating as IP (Intellectual Property) in FPGAs.

To help define the meaning of “high-speed A/D” used in this handbook, we will be focusing primarily on A/D converters with sampling rates higher than 100 MHz. We will review sampling techniques, FPGA technology and we will present the latest Pentek high-speed A/D products and applications based on them.

SDR (Software-Defined Radio) has revolutionized electronic systems for a variety of applications including communications, data acquisition and signal processing.This handbook shows how DDCs (Digital Downconverters) and DUCs (Digital Upconverters), the fundamental building blocks of SDR, can replace legacy analog receiver and transmitter designs while offering significant benefits in performance, density and cost.

Before the advent of OpenVPX, designers of embedded systems took advantage of the extreme connectivity offered by VPX (VITA 46), but were faced with a virtually unlimited number of possible implementations. Specific choices for the control and data channel assignments for each slot, the backplane connectivity, and serial fabrics were often made somewhat arbitrarily to suit the particular needs of the current system. Although following the general framework of VITA 46, each system tended to be so unique, that the boards and backplanes designed for one system were seldom usable in other systems, even from the same vendor.

NASA has teamed with Uber Technologies to further explore concepts and technologies related to urban air mobility (UAM) to ensure a safe and efficient system for future air transportation in populated areas. Uber will share its plans for implementing an urban aviation rideshare network, and NASA will use its airspace management computer modeling and simulation to assess the impacts of small aircraft in crowded environments.

A Northwestern University and Argonne National Laboratory research team has developed an exceptional next-generation material for nuclear radiation detection that could provide a significantly less expensive alternative to the detectors now in commercial use. Specifically, the high-performance material is used in a device that can detect gamma rays, weak signals given off by nuclear materials, and can easily identify individual radioactive isotopes. It has been more than 30 years since a material with this performance was developed, with the new material having the advantage of inexpensive production.

A multi-disciplinary team of researchers at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory pushed grain size engineering to the limit and recently discovered previously unseen behaviors in nanocrystalline ceramics that could lead to the design of better performing ceramic armor. The discovery, a continuation of NRL research published in 2014, was made possible by a cutting-edge nanosintering technique, which is the process of essentially bonding nano-sized particles together.

New technology allows U.S. soldiers to learn 13-times faster than conventional methods, and Army researchers said this may help save lives.