Enabling technologies for military & aerospace electronics engineers
Board products
JPL integrators choose RT Logic VME signal processor for Deep Space Network
Systems integrators at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif., needed signal processing for their Deep Space Network. The Telemetrix 505 from Real Time Logic Inc. — otherwise known as RT Logic — in Colorado Springs, Colo., met their needs.
The Telemetrix 505 processes a wide variety of downlink signals from a several different interplanetary and earth orbiting satellites, RT Logic officials say. Company engineers all call the product their Telemetry Processor (TLP).
The Deep Space Network is NASA's international network of antennas located at Goldstone, Calif.; Madrid, Spain; and near Canberra in Australia.
As the downlink TLP, the Telemetrix 505 performs digital signal processing and data routing. Signal processing includes Viterbi decoding, time tagging, frame synchronization, and Reed/Solomon decoding.
The TLP routes data to and from external data decoders and enables archival of acquired telemetry. The TLP includes a processor that hosts JPL developed software for further data processing required by specific missions.
Hardware for the Telemetrix 505-based TLP includes a 12-slot VME chassis, two PowerPC processors running the VxWorks operating system from Wind River Systems in Alameda, Calif., a nine-gigabyte hard disk dive, a 6U VME Viterbi decoder/data multiplexer card, and a PCI mezzanine card (PMC) module for frame synchronization with Reed/Solomon decoding.
RT Logic engineers developed the device drivers for the VME Viterbi decoder card and the PMC frame synchronizer, configured all of the hardware within the VME chassis, integrated the software and hardware, created system documentation, and conducted acceptance testing, company officials say.
"Our blend of COTS [commercial off-the-shelf] technology with limited new development allowed us to meet the aggressive schedule and provide JPL with a flexible system for future enhancement," says Sean Conway, RT Logic's vice president and project manager for the effort. "JPL's desire to integrate the Telemetrix 505 into an existing software control environment was made easy with the use of our open software architecture."
For more information contact RT Logic by phone at 719-598-2801, by fax at 719-598-2655, by post at 1042 Elkton Drive, Colorado Springs, Colo. 80907. or on the World Wide Web at http://www.rtlogic.com/.
Computers
Logicon to install, support Naval Research Lab supercomputer
HERNDON, Va. — Officials at the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) in Washington, D.C., have tasked engineers at Logicon Inc., a Northrop Grumman Corporation company, to install and support a Cray MTA-2 multithreaded supercomputer from Cray Inc. in Seattle.
"The all-CMOS MTA-2 will be the first system of its type installed," says John Stephens, acting director of Logicon's Scientific Computing Services. "It represents a breakthrough design that will significantly expand the computational capabilities at NRL, especially for memory-intensive applications."
"We are pleased to participate in Logicon's Millennia contract," says Jim Rottsolk, chairman and chief executive officer, Cray Inc. "This order for a sizeable all-CMOS Cray MTA-2 supercomputer system is an important milestone for Cray Inc. We believe the Cray MTA-2's revolutionary design - especially its scalable shared memory, extremely fast input/output and programming ease - will enable unprecedented performance on a range of important, currently intractable problems."
The task order calls for a 28-processor, Cray MTA-2 system with 112 gigabytes of memory to be installed at the NRL in the fourth quarter of 2001. The system supports up to 128 RISC-like hardware streams per processor and provides bandwidth that scales efficiently with the number of processors.
For the NRL, Logicon's work will focus on engineering and support services. Logicon is helping to advance high performance computing (HPC) research in the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) through its role as integrator for the Naval Oceanographic Office Major Shared Resource Center at Stennis Space Center, Miss., one of four such centers in the DOD's HPC Modernization program. The company also supports HPC work at the Fleet Numerical Meteorological and Oceanography Center in Monterey, Calif.
The 10-year program was awarded to Logicon as a task order by the General Services Administration (GSA) Federal Systems Integration and Management Center (FEDSIM) under the Millennia contract. Funding for the contract is provided through the DOD HPC Modernization Office. Cray Inc. is the major subcontractor on the program.
GSA FEDSIM is a program under the Federal Technology Service providing large-scale systems integration support to other federal agencies. Millennia is a multiple-award, indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity contract to provide information technology services to federal agencies worldwide. Logicon was one of 12 contractors selected in 1999 to compete for task orders on this 10-year, $25 billion contract vehicle. — J.M.
For more information on Logicon contact the company by phone at 703-713-4000, by fax at 703-713-4127, by mail at 2411 Dulles Corner Park, Suite #800, Herndon, VA 20171, or on the World Wide Web at http://www.logicon.com.
Software
Lockheed Martin uses VPI software tool for F-22
Experts at Lockheed Martin Aeronautics in Palmdale, Calif., used software tools from Virtual Prototypes (VPI) in Montreal for the F-22 Block 3 software.
The software, which provides for full avionics sensor fusion (radar, electronic warfare and communications/navigation/identification), has enabled the F-22 to make progress toward achieving low-rate production, VPI officials say. VPI engineers provided Lockheed Martin with their VAPS and CCG Lite software development and code generation tools, which were used to produce the cockpit display avionics code.
"VAPS and CCG Lite software from VPI have greatly enhanced the productivity of our software engineers enabling us to meet this very important milestone," says Mike Morton, F-22 avionics architect at Lockheed Martin.
The relationship between VPI and the cockpit avionics development team at Lockheed-Martin has led to the first flight of the aircraft with the display code automatically generated from the original design concept, VPI officials say. VPI's suite of tools provides an efficient virtual product engineering development environment that has reduced development costs and lifecycle time for Lockheed Martin, they claim. — J.M.
For more information on Virtual Prototypes contact Joanne Parent by phone 514-341-3874, by fax at 514-341-3232, by email at [email protected], or on the World Wide Web at http://www.virtualprototypes.ca.
