 Military applications are requiring smaller and smaller form-factors in order to fit into space-constrained areas. The challenge then becomes one of satisfying the processing requirements of a particular application, while also providing a light-weight, small form-factor solution. This is where BittWare’s expertise in hybrid signal processing design shows itself. By providing a solution that incorporates both FPGAs and DSPs, the number of total processing units per board decreases, enabling a small form factor to be used.
BittWare’s customer had been tasked with designing a light-weight radar system which would be used on unmanned and manned vehicles. This new radar system would provide unprecedented situational awareness and target coordination, while also satisfying the challenges of high-end floating point processing power, and low power.
The solution was based on BittWare’s GT-3U-cPCI hybrid signal processing board. The on-board FPGA provides all front-end processing, analyzing all incoming data, and only passing along the “desired” data to the DSPs. FPGAs are more suited to this type of repetitive processing, enabling the on-board DSPs to do what they are best at – extremely complex data analysis in real-time. The combination of the two created a solution requiring less on-board processing units compared to using only DSPs, saving space and allowing for a smaller form factor solution. To satisfy the ruggedization
required of these types of systems, BittWare designed a solution knowing that a ruggedized end product was required. |
