Electronic warfare has become part of the strategic landscape for all war fighters on the ground, at sea, and in the air. Threats change quickly, so fast characterization of the electromagnetic landscape and shifting tactical responses are the metrics in modern electronic warfare. This drives the design of reconfigurable logic and software-based systems in military hardware. It also means that algorithm development and operational concepts are beginning to dominate weapon and threat-support systems design.
Different Electronic Warfare Requirements
Electronic warfare doctrine divides military electromagnetic activity into electronic support, electronic attack, and electronic protect. Each of these activities is further divided into passive techniques and active ones. This means the electronic warfare category spans across search, intercept, direction finding, jamming, deception, shielding, encryption, and anti-jam technologies. New commercial and adversary uses of the electromagnetic spectrum appear every year, as does the breadth of usage, which increases the territory covered by military systems each year.
Open Systems and High-Speed Transceivers
An important initiative in military electronics is the design of “open systems” that use common interface standards and modular commands and controls. Open systems allow military systems to easily add and remove mission functions without the need to reengineer all of the subsystems with which they interface. True open-system design requires the following features in digital logic:
- Reliable high-speed serial transceivers
- Strong intellectual property (IP) support libraries of commercial data standards
- System integration tools with high usability
Altera® programmable logic devices (PLDs) and HardCopy® ASICs have the fastest, most-reliable FPGA transceivers on the market. With speeds currently specified and characterized up to 8.5 Gbps in Stratix® IV GX FPGAs and industry-leading signal integrity, open military systems can rely on Altera PLDs to power mission-critical systems. Only Altera has a successful track record of five generations of transceiver devices designed by the same internal design and characterization teams. This reduces risk in product release schedules, and reduces risk for designers using high-speed serial interfaces.
Modular designs of surveillance and electronic warfare systems are now focused on design re-use and interoperability. Aircraft and weapon systems design is no longer the sole function of one design group, but a mindset that must be shared by design architects and digital logic designers. Altera's Stratix series FPGAs and Quartus® II design software offer real solutions to the design challenges of electronic warfare systems. From interconnect speed and latency, heat dissipation, and design complexity to lean compile times, Altera products offer advantages that are visible from architectural design all the way to field deployment.
