Features & Analysis

SAN DIEGO, 27 Jan. 2012. Military electronics industry experts are optimistic for the continued health in military electronics spending for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR); command, control, computers, and intelligence (C4I), unmanned vehicles, and electronic warfare (EW) in the upcoming fiscal year 2013 budget request for the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD), which is scheduled for public release and submission to Congress on 13 Feb.

Jan. 4, 2012 By Chris Murray.

When it comes to a sound certification practice, commercial and military avionics are light years ahead of the pack. DO-178 certification, first introduced in the 1980s, represents the gold-standard, requiring companies to comply with software processes that mandate requirements traceability, software architecture and coding guidance, comprehensive testing of all code, and the production of certifiable products. Both commercial and military industries boast the healthiest record on system safety. And, largely due to these processes, projects such as the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) are recognized for the highest levels of design and safety integrity.

Jan. 1, 2012. U.S. Navy and Marine Corps manned and unmanned aircraft benefit from increasingly robust, flexible, and advanced electronics. U.S. Navy and Marine Corps officials share a singular goal: to infuse new and existing aircraft with advanced avionics technology. Today’s avionics advancements, being employed in manned and unmanned aircraft, provide a competitive advantage and increased potential for mission success and warfighter safety.

Modern aerospace communications systems must be mobile, operate in harsh environments, overcome active and passive interference, and meet a variety of mission scenarios.  Interoperability requirements demand flexibility, while the proliferation of multimedia data streams demand high throughput.  Consider, for example, the Joint Tactical Radio System (JTRS), which must transmit and receive a number of waveforms with a significant variation in the form factor for the transceivers.  To meet all these requirements, designers must create systems that combine software and hardware, using both programmable DSPs and FPGAs. To create, test, and deploy these types of systems, engineers need a new paradigm for development that focuses on creating and testing models and prototypes before final hardware implementations, saving both time and money.  

Avionics systems designers and systems integrators are faced with the challenge of size, weight, and power (SWaP) constraints. Commercial, business, and military aviation customers increasingly desire modern avionics—whether installing in new aircraft platforms, or retrofitting current fleets of airplanes. Read on for real-world applications of how organizations are tapping the latest avionics innovations to pack a wealth of robust electronics in small spaces while delivering sufficient power and electronics cooling.   

Programmed U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) spending shows a planned 4.7 percent increase in overall military avionics spending through 2015, yet significant shifts in spending patterns—including more selective and specialized spending—are expected, reveals the U.S. Military Avionics Market Assessment from Frost & Sullivan analysts. New F-35 and remanufactured helicopter installations and a move toward more general-purpose aircraft and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) requiring modular, integrated avionics, and greater information flow are helping drive greater focus and spending on modern military avionics.

High-brightness LEDs with fiber optics, CCD array sensors, archiving of defect images and data, and real-time PC graphic-user interface are some of the latest features being designed into next-generation handheld optical micrometers used to determine the severity of damage caused to critical parts from scratches, blemishes, and corrosion pits.

Air traffic management (ATM) in air traffic cockpits will have a new look by the end of this decade as airspace systems move from radar based air traffic control (ATC) to satellite-based ATM technology, which will give air traffic controllers and aircraft pilots increasingly precise positioning in relation to other aircraft thereby improving efficiency and safety in the air and on the ground. The key initiatives behind the move to satellite-based navigation are the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen) and Europe’s Single European Sky ATM Research (SESAR).

The increased situational awareness capability that pilots want in the cockpit is what is is driving avionics display development. Meanwhile avionics designers are calling for smaller display designs in commercial and military avionics retrofit programs. 

By Joy Lin, aerospace and defense industry marketing manager, MathWorks
Unmanned aerial systems (UASs) are becoming more and more complex in order to fulfill a number of potentially conflicting performance and robustness requirements. However, the use traditional development methods that continue to rely on legacy designs and domain specific tools that perform subsystem-level optimization make it difficult, if not impossible to perform system-level design optimization of these complex systems.

SEATTLE, Wash., 16 June 2011. The Boeing 787 Dreamliner -- one of the most promoted and hyped aircraft in the history of aviation -- should be in operation before the year is out with its launch operator, All Nippon Airlines (ANA), having completed flight training and final validation of the aircraft. The 787 avionics systems and components have been set for some time, but as the 787 nears deployment it might be a good time for a refresher on what is in the cockpit of Boeing's newest jet.

Designers of aviation data recorders for military and commercial aviation say the devices are trending toward improved networking capability and smaller sizes with in a market that continues to offer opportunities. Security -- especially in military flight recorders -- is becoming high priority as well with information assurance requirements being implemented even for unclassified data.

Avionics software is becoming more and more complex as aircraft designers and operators want passengers to be more safe and pilots to have avionics suites that deliver necessary information in real-time. Certification standards such as DO-178B enable safety in avionics systems.   

Real-time operating system (RTOS) designers say their niche has become an essential part of any avionics system or military electronics program -- after years of being taken for granted. Defense and aerospace program managers rely on the RTOS to execute application-specific tasks reliably, consistently, and predictably especially in terms of flight software and complying with avionics certification standards such as DO-178B and its follow-on standard, DO-178C.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in January 2010 gave LightSquared, a communications company in Reston, Va., that has been assigned frequencies in the mobile satellite services (MSS) band, a conditional approval to operate as a wholesaler of terrestrial-only, high-speed wireless services. Although the controversial waiver which allowed this to happen was the culmination of almost a decade of advocacy within the FCC, the final step appears to have been rushed through on the graveyard shift, according to the global positioning system (GPS) view. The approval also came through the day after the State of the Union message spotlighted high-speed wireless access as a national priority.

LONDON, 21 April 2011. A robust commercial avionics market is still expected to return in the 2014 time frame, say analysts at Frost & Sullivan in London, but in the meantime rising fuel prices are showing no sign of stabilizing and frustrating European airlines -- such as Lufthansa, AF-KLM, and British Airways-Iberia -- that had seen a recent increase in profit and traffic.

Designers of electronic flight bags (EFBs) say there is increased interest among airlines and operators in EFBs as a cost-effective solution for integrating Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen) technology, but the overall market still remains relatively flat.

Developed by the RTCA in 2000, DO-254 was prompted by the need to address potential safety issues regarding electronic hardware -- chips, boards, and boxes. It is now required on all civil aircraft types, including helicopters, and the military is adopting it as well.