Black Boxes
Embedded Military Grade Solutions – Black Box
First of all, what is a black box? The embedded COTS industry has standardised black as the colour of choice when building a rugged military grade embedded solution, so we call them black boxes. Black is the most efficient colour for heat dissipation and ideal for these compute intensive solutions.
Unitronix supplies and supports the black box solutions from Curtiss Wright, NAI & iRF. These include deployable functionality such as mission systems, IO data remote nodes, vehicle computing, vehicle and rugged switching networks, GPGPU processing, secure disk (Data at Rest) modules and routers.
In addition to the off-the-shelf capability shown here, it is always possible to customise a system or enclose a customer’s requirements as a custom build. Please call for more information.
Developers of modern mission processing systems often encounter programme delays and increasing costs associated with maximising performance and qualifying the system for defence and aerospace deployment. Using decades of experience in designing embedded systems, Curtiss-Wright MPMC Rugged Mission Computers can be deployed quickly and cost effectively while greatly reducing programme risk.
These SWaP-optimised, light-weight 3U OpenVPX rugged mission computer systems provide pre-integrated, pre-validated COTS (Commercial off the Shelf) open standards based systems qualified to the harsh environments of defence and aerospace computing applications for temperature extremes, altitude, voltage spikes, shock, vibration and more. Pre-configured to maximise performance, thermal performance and ruggedisation, these rugged embedded systems use rugged chassis, backplanes, power supplies, processor boards, and I/O interfaces required by modern mission computers.
Curtiss-Wright’s 6U Multi-Platform Mission Computer (MPMC) product family consists of fully integrated computing subsystems ready for deployment in high-performance applications. MPMC products are packaged COTS systems comprised of 6U VPX, VME or Compact PCI (cPCI) backplanes housed in rugged chassis fully pre-configured with power supplies and high performance Curtiss-Wright computing boards offering a wide range of I/O. MPMC systems offer the high processing power and standard interfaces required by modern mission computers.
MPMC Systems deliver off-the-shelf system solutions to speed deployment of critical applications for high-performance data and signal processing applications for the defence and aerospace industries. Packaged in rugged enclosures, MPMC Systems are designed to meet the harsh environments of military and aerospace computing applications including temperature extremes, altitude, voltage spikes, shock, vibration and more.
Aerospace and defence system integrators continue to push for reductions in size, weight, power and cost (SWaP-C) to support advanced sensor/vetronics payloads onboard manned and unmanned platforms. Fortunately, groundbreaking miniaturisation of mission processor subsystems are enabling platforms to expand their mission capabilities.
Curtiss-Wrights rugged commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) mission computer subsystems in the small form factor (SFF) Parvus DuraCOR product line feature modular, expandable designs with powerful graphics and data processing capabilities together with ultra-reliable mechanical robustness. With decades of experience developing smaller, smarter, faster and stronger defence solutions, Curtiss-Wright has engineered its DuraCOR product family to address SWaP-C requirements. This lets our customers deploy a fully-functional, environmentally-hardened subsystem in a matter of weeks.
When it comes to enhancing situational awareness in today’s defence platforms, seamless and trusted communication between mission-critical systems is imperative.
Curtiss-Wright’s field-proven rugged switches and routers enable mobile networks on-board vehicle and aircraft platforms to securely and affordably deploy digital network architectures for situational awareness and network-centric operations. Designed to enable a holistic ecosystem where all technological components work together to enhance the warfighter experience, these rugged subsystems and card solutions give system integrators capabilities for interconnecting cards, sensors and processors simply through switched Ethernet links.
If your defence and aerospace programme is challenged with designing, manufacturing, integrating and managing a processing and/or recording system with a long life cycle and you have high performance requirements that change regularly, tight deadlines, limited budgets, and obsolescence management concerns, Curtiss-Wright system design, engineering and integration services minimise your programme risks and keep your program on schedule.
Curtiss-Wright’s experienced systems design and integration teams analyse your system requirements, conduct trade studies to identify appropriate products, analyse data paths and select suitable cooling approaches, and create a rugged system solution tailored and optimised for your platform or programme.
NAI’s family of highly configurable Rugged COTS Systems are ideally suited for defence, commercial aerospace and industrial applications that require high-density I/O, communications, Ethernet switching and processing for mission-critical tasks such as communications, guidance, sense and response, data acquisition and motion control. The simplified, modular approach of our Configurable Open Systems Architecture™ (COSA®) enables us to use the same building blocks across multiple platforms and programmes, making it possible for you to develop semi-custom solutions quickly, without NRE, while retaining all the benefits of COTS products.
With ever increasing data demands on-board today’s platforms, network attached storage (NAS) technology is delivering optimal, reliable performance with increasing storage capacity. In addition, encryption solutions are becoming more important as the need for sensitive information storage is on the rise. Our encrypted NAS products are rugged, solid state, storage subsystems, fielded on a wide range of defence and aerospace applications today.
Specifically designed to reliably provide file services to clients on an Ethernet network in a rugged environment, Curtiss-Wright NAS solutions protect the data-at-rest (DAR) with the industry’s first NIAP Common Criteria (CC) certified 2-Layer encryption, as well as an option for NSA Type 1 encryption. With terabytes of available storage space and 100k insertion cycle connectors, these scalable rugged Ethernet file servers enable reliable, secure storage of your critical data.
Reaping the benefits of the advancements in sensor and camera technology requires the video system components to ensure interoperability, reliability and SWaP optimisation. At the heart of a modern video management system (VMS) is video distribution technology that acts as the central hub for the proliferating number of video sources on-board today’s mobile vehicles.
An HD VMS typically consists of a combination of multifunction displays, video recorders and an HD video distribution unit, as well as additional equipment such as keyboards for map control. A fully integrated video system gives the user unparalleled control over aircraft video signals, allowing the user to select video sources, create different video source views and manage the downlinked and recorded video channels.
Curtiss-Wright’s portfolio of off-the-shelf video management building blocks includes analogue and digital video switches that are the smallest and lightest on the market, a video gateway that minimises system latency for multi-sensor I/O applications and other distribution solutions that reduce redundant equipment and operator overhead.
Video recording can provide the crew with important information used for training, debrief or evidential purposes. Curtiss-Wright’s SWaP-optimised VRDV700 video recorder seamlessly integrates with other Curtiss-Wright video components such as mission displays and video distribution products and is designed to capture mission video from leading sensor systems, demanding environments.
VRDV7000 small form factor, lightweight, ruggedised digital video recorder. The recorder combines and enhances many of the features offered in other members of the family, including support for both digital (HD-SDI) and analogue (RGB, S-Video and composite) video.
VRDV7000 uses MPEG-4 Part 10 (Advanced Video Coding)/H.264 video compression technology to provide the highest quality video recording at a bit rate that allows many hours of recorded video to be stored on a Secure Digital (SD) card or a USB Flash drive. A standard non-proprietary file format is used so that recordings may be played back on standard media player software without any further processing required.