Electronic warfare is an essential part of the strategic environment for threats on the ground, at sea, and in the air. Because threats require rapid and shifting tactical responses, the design flexibility provided by programmable logic is key in military hardware. In addition, with rapidly increasing computation requirements, higher density and higher performance reconfigurable silicon devices are ideal.

Open Systems and High-Speed Transceivers

An important initiative in military electronics is the design of “open systems” that uses common interface standards and modular commands and controls. Open systems allow military systems to easily add and remove mission functions without reengineering all of the subsystems with which they interface. True open-system design requires the following digital logic features:

• 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 to 12.5 Gbps and 28 Gbps in Stratix^® V 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 six 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.

Stratix V FPGA Advantages for Military Hardware Design

• Variable-precision digital signal processing (DSP) architecture, offering native 27x27 multipliers and 64-bit accumulators (See Figure 2)
• Efficient hardware support and IP cores for floating-point implementations
• Industry-leading transceivers with an option delivering speeds up to 28-Gbps chip-to-chip data rates
• Industry-leading logic, memory, and DSP density
• User-friendly partial reconfiguration, over large or small portions of the FPGA
• Automatic single event upset (SEU) detection and correction
• Programmable Power Technology, to automatically reduce power consumption where performance requirements allow
• Design security and anti-tamper features, including government-approved Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) encryption
• High-productivity Simulink design flow, with fMAX and latency-constrained synthesis of optimized register transfer level (RTL)
• Seamless migration to HardCopy ASICs for power and performance enhancements

Figure 1. Electronic Warfare System Diagram

Figure 2. Variable-Precision DSP Block Architectures

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.

Related Links

• Open Systems Electronic Warfare Design with PLDs and High-Speed Transceivers white paper (PDF)
• Stratix V FPGAs
• HardCopy V ASICs
• HardCopy IV ASICs
• DSP Solutions 
• DSP Builder and Simulink
• High-Speed Serial I/Os
• Military Risk and Productivity