AUSA 2019: Interoperability is Key Focus in Development System Aligned to SOSA

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At AUSA 2019, the Association of United States Defense Exhibition in Washington D.C. Elma Electronic Inc. showcases a functional demo that supports the DoD's MOSA (Modular Open Standards Approach) initiative for better collaboration between government, integrators and industry suppliers. To see the functional demo in action, visit Elma Electronic Inc. at AUSA 2019 Booth #2163.

Interoperability is Key Focus in Development System Aligned to SOSA AUSA 2019 925 001
Elma Electronic Inc. booth at AUSA 2019, Association of United States Army Defense Exhibition in Washington D.C. (Picture source Army Recognition)

Based on a successful design that participated in SOSA's inaugural "PlugTest" in September, the system being showcased at AUSA is focused on applications designed for signal intelligence (SIGINT) and electronic warfare (EW). The primary goal of the "PlugTest" was to test alignment to the current version of the in-process SOSA standard.

Working with several other members of the SOSA (Sensor Open Standards Architecture) consortium, Elma created an application development environment capable of integrating multiple boards from different companies into one functional platform.

Ken Grob, director of embedded computing systems for Elma noted, "As we move deeper into the DoD's mandate, as expressed in the January tri-service memo, for increased interoperability across computing platforms, developing successful integrations between different partners will be the momentum that keeps this initiative moving forward. This functional demo at AUSA includes products from four SOSA consortium members, but we have also tested cards and power supplies from several other vendors with the same positive results."

The base of the showcased development environment is a 3U, 11-slot, OpenVPX E-Frame from Elma with six payload slots. A dual-channel SDR (software-defined radio) transceiver card from Spectranetix captures the digitized signals and a 3U VPX A-PNT (assured position, navigation and timing) card from Curtiss Wright that provides accurate clocking, sampling and triggering. The digitized data is sent over Ethernet via an Interface Concept high-speed switch, which delivers the data to a laptop for spectrum analysis view.

This 3U OpenVPX system is a complete test environment platform intended to support application development efforts where conformance with the hardware convergence requirements of the DoD’s CMOSS (C4ISR/EW Modular Open Suite of Standards) initiative is the goal. At the heart of the system is Elma’s 12 slot (12 payload and 2 power supply slots) CMOSS backplane with support for VPX / SOSA (Sensor Open Standards Architecture) module slot profiles. The backplane features high-speed RF and optical I/O connectivity and VPX slot profiles as developed in conjunction with CERDEC (the Army Communications, Electronics, Research, Development and Engineering Center), the ONR (Office of Naval Research) and AFRL (the Air Force Research Lab). The platform optionally includes a set of OpenVPX computer, networking and network timing modules to streamline your development efforts and shorten your time to deployment.

Various software implemented on the system includes MORA signal port manager and reference library as well as multiple bus support (ML2B, VDB, etc.) and tactical MDM spectrum viewer.