Features & Analysis

PRODUCT INTELLIGENCE, 21 Feb. 2012.There’s one thing all electronics need, and that’s power. Power supplies and converters are important parts of the system they inhabit, and as such need to meet rigorous standards lest the entire system shut down for want, or excess, of power. Systems integrators who are looking to purchase power supplies and converters need to weigh reliability, weight, power and cost carefully.

WASHINGTON, 20 Feb. 2012. The U.S. Air Force's plan to upgrade the Lockheed Martin C-5 Galaxy cargo jet with new avionics and new engines is among the top defense systems upgrades and technology-insertion priorities for the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) 2013 budget request submitted to Congress last week. The Air Force C-5M Super Galaxy project is part of the $14.44 billion that DOD officials plan to spend for systems upgrades and technology insertion next year, according to DOD budget documents.

PRODUCT INTELLIGENCE, 9 Feb. 2012. CompactPCI has been a staple of many military computers for more than fifteen years. The venerable computer bus interconnect was ratified in 1995, and is still used today in applications where size and cost matter more than moving huge volumes of data.

TECHNOLOGY FOCUS, 8 Feb. 2012. Systems designers and systems integrators have openly admitted to treating connectors as something of an afterthought in years past. Today, however, connectors are often a central focus and concern for engineers championing efficient, effective, and innovative electronic systems for aerospace and defense applications.

SPECIAL REPORT, 7 Feb. 2011. Despite budget cutbacks and a lack of support, U.S. military officials have pushed through upgrades and technology insertion for the nation's land- and sea-based atomic missiles, as well as for the nuclear arsenal's multi-layer command-and-control systems.

LOS ANGELES, 31 Jan. 2012. I hear a lot about upcoming hard times in the defense and commercial aviation sectors, so imagine my surprise this past week when saw reports that the Pentagon bought 25 sophisticated combat aircraft, and commercial airlines bought 275 commercial passenger jets. That's orders for 300 advanced-technology aircraft. In one week. Worth tens of billions of dollars.

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.