The U.S. Navy often updates its Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyers with the latest technologies to maintain warfighting efficiency and readiness.
The Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC) in Port Hueneme, Calif., part of the Naval Sea Systems Command, is charged with developing, evaluating, and deploying new technologies to achieve the Navy’s operational objectives.
One such objective is to improve shipboard information communication and situational awareness. To that end, The Port Hueneme NSWC division incorporated the QuadView multi-image display processor from RGB Spectrum in Alameda, Calif., in its integrated video data distribution System (IVDDS).
On the destroyers, the Aegis command and decision system receives data from ship and external sensors via satellite communications and provides command, control, and threat assessment information. IVDDS and the QuadView improve situational awareness by providing several visuals from various disparate sources in real time and in multiple locations throughout the ship.
The QuadView processor, installed in the ship’s combat information center (CIC), receives feeds from Aegis close-in threat sensors, forward-looking infrared, and live video from six cameras at various locations on the ship. After operators choose from a selection of switched inputs, each processor merges as many as four of the incoming sources and outputs a combined image for each screen.
The QuadView four-window images are distributed to 14 flat-panel displays and two large-screen projectors at 1280-by-1024-pixel resolution. Each image can zoom and pan to focus on a particular area of interest via the QuadView’s embedded browser-based interface. For more information, visit www.rgb.com.
