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Aerospace

Choosing a Capacitor for Use as a Switch-Mode Power Supply Filter

Input filter caps need to be able to supply a quick burst of energy and to suppress noise generated in the switch circuit. Important considerations for the input filter cap are...

Briefs

Electronics & Computers

Open Network Architecture for Army Vehicle Electronics

Army vehicle electronics networking is complex and challenging due to vendor-specific devices and interfaces. Military vehicles require 100% network uptime and security. The network must reduce vehicle clutter, focus on saving soldiers’ lives, and provide minimum latency. Battle requirements...

Articles

Electronics & Computers

The Evolution of CompactPCI From Parallel to Serial I/O

The true worth of an industry standard is measured in its ability to stand the test of time. From the onset, the system configuration, hardware components, and integration strategy all...

Briefs

Information Technology

Data Fusion of Geographically Dispersed Information for Test and Evaluation

Test and evaluation relies on computer collection and manipulation of data from a myriad of sensors and sources. More computing power allows for increases in the breadth and depth of the information collected. The same computing power must assist in identifying, ordering,...

Articles

Electronics & Computers

Applying OpenVPX to Single Board Computers

For more than two decades, single board computers (SBCs) built on open standards have been largely based on specifications from two preeminent industry organizations, VITA and PICMG. For the 6U...

Products

RF & Microwave Electronics

Keeping Pace With Military Radio and SDR Technology

There are two absolute truths about wireless military radios. The first is that wireless military radios must be accurate and reliable in mission-critical applications to guarantee the safety...

Application Briefs

Defense

Low-Voltage Platform Powers US Army's Fuel Efficient Ground Vehicle Demonstrator (FED)

Kollmorgen has released an in-line variant of its lightweight, low voltage Power Generation System, which will be used by the United States Army to deliver...

Briefs

Software

Environmental Awareness of Sensor and Emitter Employment

Many Army missions rely on effective sensing capabilities that provide intelligence on the adversary, and protect friendly forces from enemy detection. Sensors that are stationary (microphones, geophones, and ground-based radars) and moving (cameras on unattended aerial vehicles and ground...

Articles

Electronics & Computers

Stackable Computer Architecture Moves to 3rd Generation

Change is a concept that is well known in the computer industry. Designers and manufacturers alike have embraced this trend in an ongoing race to increase computing power while reducing...

Articles

Electronics & Computers

Small Form Factor Computing in OpenVPX

The new OpenVPX™ (VITA 65) standard helps military system designers build compatible embedded systems by defining “profiles” to which vendors can adhere when designing boards, and system integrators...

Briefs

Electronics & Computers

Testbed for Reconfigurable Network Security Research and Experimentation

A novel, reconfigurable network testbed has been developed, suitable for the implementation, testing, and analysis of new and existing network-based defenses against...

Briefs

Electronics & Computers

Architectures for Cognitive Systems

A need exists for small, autonomic systems in the battlefield. Autonomy allows the creation of unmanned systems to perform complex, high-risk, and/or covert operations in the battlefield without the need for...

Briefs

Electronics & Computers

Circuit-Switched Memory Access in Photonic Interconnection Networks for High-Performance Embedded Computing

High-performance embedded systems, such as those found in aerial surveillance platforms and handheld devices used by the military, are of key importance. These systems are characterized by stringent power budgets and the need for extremely...

Briefs

Data Acquisition

Development and Test of a Medium-Voltage Converter for Ocean Observatories

A critical component in regional-scale undersea power systems is the medium-voltage converter (MVC). The MVC is a DC-DC converter in the primary network infrastructure...

Articles

Aerospace

FPGA Software Tests Telescope Microshutters

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the next big telescope at NASA, will be placed at a stable Lagrange point approximately 1 million miles from the Earth. This telescope is the next stepping stone...

Articles

RF & Microwave Electronics

Passive Devices Designed to Improve Signal-to-Noise Ratios in Defense Electronics

While power architectures of defense electronics are extremely diverse, all have common operational demands: they must be robust (shock, vibration, temperature...

Briefs

Information Technology

Flexible Computing Architecture for Real-Time Skin Detection

In both the Air Force and search and rescue (SAR) communities, there is a need to detect and characterize persons. Existing methods use red-green-blue (RGB) imagery, but produce high false alarm rates. New technology in multispectral skin detection is better than the existing RGB methods,...

Briefs

Materials

Shape Memory Polymer Process Development

This work introduces a simple technique of separately fabricating electrospun short fibers. This technique employs a paper mesh, which is placed between the needle tip and counter electrode of the...

Articles

Aerospace

UAV Airframes and Missions Drive Embedded Computing Choices

Every branch of the armed forces has a need for capabilities delivered from unmanned aerial vehicle/ unmanned aerial system (UAV/UAS) platforms. These unmanned vehicles have proved...

Briefs

Electronics & Computers

Channel Field Effect Transistors

Narrow bandgap semiconductors offer high carrier mobilities and low contact resistances, while wide bandgap semiconductors offer high breakdown voltages. A series of heterojunction transistors has been investigated and proved to be effective for improving both speed and power output. These devices include double...

Articles

Photonics/Optics

CAT Scanner Provides 3D View Inside Nuclear Weapon Components

The Department of Energy’s (DoE) National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) is pursuing a smaller, safer, more secure, and less expensive nuclear weapons complex. Meeting that...

Briefs

Information Technology

Considering Software Protection for Embedded Systems

Given the current trend of reprogrammable embedded devices within the Department of Defense and industry, attention needs to be refocused on the benefits or measurability of software protection applied to this domain. Modern reconfigurable embedded systems consider circuits as software and the...

Briefs

Electronics & Computers

Asymmetric Core Computing for High-Performance Applications

High-performance computing (HPC) users have traditionally relied upon two things to supply them with processing power: speed of the central processing units (CPUs) and the scalability of the system. There are problems with this approach. Physical limitations are curtailing clock speed...

Briefs

Physical Sciences

GigE Advanced Imaging Sensor

The Wide-Field Dynamic Range (WFDR) camera is a high-sensitivity, wide-field-of-regard sensor of importance to future military surveillance and survivability systems. It is intended to be used in harsh, noisy...

Articles

Aerospace

Improved Interference Rejection Using Multi-Static Radar Signal Processing

In multi-static radar (MSR), the transmit/ receive aperture is divided into a number of sub-apertures that can be placed in various locations relative to each other....

Articles

Aerospace

USB-to-Synchronous Cable Enables IP Data Communications for Tactical Radios

Warfighters can benefit greatly from having radio IP-based data communications at the theater level. Unfortunately, the vast majority of the 750,000 tactical radio...

Briefs

Electronics & Computers

Effects of Differing Carbon Nanotube Field-Effect Transistor Architectures

Understanding the differing methods and materials that can be used for producing carbon nanotube (CNT)- based electronic components means an informed use of materials...

Briefs

Electronics & Computers

Silicon Carbide Junction Field-Effect Transistor Devices for Scalable Solid-State Circuit Breakers

Power electronic converters functioning as components in high-power systems, such as those of hybrid military ground vehicles, require fast fault...

Briefs

Materials

Performance Evaluation of Commercial Carbon Monofluoride Materials in Lithium Batteries

The performance of six different commercially available carbon monofluoride (CFx) materials was evaluated at four different discharge rates. The physical...