Government and Defense Overview

Technology spending in Government and Defense over the next ten years and beyond will place heavy emphasis on unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and much of the supporting infrastructure like ground control stations, shipboard control stations and Command and Control systems. As UAVs move beyond traditional intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) using imaging and DSP payload sensors to more active roles generally reserved for jet fighters or special operations forces, the demand for more processing power and I/O flexibility will only increase. Supporting UAV and battlefield infrastructure like Command and Control and Secure Communications and Networking systems also have to continue to improve and scale with the ever-increasing demand for secure, distributed communication bandwidth.

Trends toward reduced Size, Weight and Power (SWaP) in the context of not only UAVs but also portable systems in every battlefield arena, puts a heavy emphasis on SBCs that rely on the latest Intel Core i7 processors to handle a multitude of I/O data requirements as well as heavy floating point and DSP computation demands thereby reducing SWaP by lowering the number of peripheral boards required. Additionally, ADL Embedded Solution’s family of low-power Intel Atom SBCs are perfectly suited to help address solutions where low-power is the primary consideration.

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UAV

SWaP-constrained UAV applications benefit from SBCs featuring Intel Core i7 processors, AVX and 256bit-wide floating point data path which more than doubles the peak floating point performance over previous Intel Core Duo and Core i7 processors. SBCs with integrated HD3000 graphics core help reduce board count by integrating floating point and vector processing operations that previously required separate peripheral boards to accomplish. For UAV ground control stations (GSCs), single board computers with PCIe point-to-point fabric (2.5GT/s and 5GT/s) provide optimal I/O flexibility for incoming ISR from UAVs and outgoing ISR to troops and other analysis groups.

  • SWaP-constrained UAV applications
  • Double peak floating point performance
  • Integrated floating point and vector processing operations

Command & Control

The key for many Command and Control applications is flexible I/O features coupled with sufficient processing power for computation and traffic management. The ADLQM67PC shines in this regard with Gen2 PCIe, 2xSATA rev. 3.0 at 6Gb/s, 8xUSB 2.0 and 2xGLAN ports. Legacy applications requiring PCI connectivity are well suited for either the ADLGS45PC PCI/104-Express SBC or the ADL945PC PCI/104 SBC.

  • Flexible I/O features
  • Processing power for computation and traffic management

Communications & Networking

The ADLGS45PC with 2xGLAN onboard and optional  4xGLAN expansion via the PCIe backplane has found wide use in several defense mini-router applications.  For one-way secure data transfer schemes requiring multiple SBCs, the ADLS15PC has been used with good success.  Mil-Std 1553 applications have been implemented with ADLS15PC, ADLGS45PC, and via the miniPCIe socket on the ADLD25 SBCs.

  • Diverse defense mini-router applications
  • One-way secure data transfer schemes

Imaging & DSP

Imaging and DSP applications have long made use of general purpose graphics processing units (GPGPU) or custom DSP peripheral cards.  These applications require high-bandwidth backplanes for data transfer to and from the SBC and work well with the 1×16 PEG PCIe lane capabilities (2.5Gb/s lanes) of the ADLGS45PC.  Similar applications requiring even greater bandwidth can move up to the ADLQM67PC (5Gb/s PCIe lanes) or in some instances, even make use of the ADLQM67PC integrated graphics core to eliminate the need for off-board vector processing or DSP hardware.

  • High-bandwidth backplanes for efficient data transfer
  • Eliminate the need for off-board vector processing hardware

Avionics

Traditional military avionics are now making way for more modern interconnected, integrated systems that allow for more situational battlefield awareness for pilots. This data-rich environment now requires much the same level of SBC performance as Command and Control systems with ISR to and from ground stations and UAV assets. Single board computers with plenty of I/O port options, backplane bandwidth and processing power capabilities are very well suited for these applications as well.

  • Interconnected, integrated systems
  • Situational battlefield awareness for pilots

Systems Integration

ADL Embedded Solutions  is well versed at not only defining SBC and peripheral expansion board solutions for most applications, but also designing, creating and integrating custom enclosures to meet both low and high IP requirements for extended temperature and rugged environments.

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