| Wideband Downconverter Specification |
| RF Input | 20 MHz – 18 GHz | |
| Instantaneous Bandwidth | 2 GHz | IF output is centered at 4 GHz |
| Noise Figure | 14-17 dB | Typical values are 12 dB |
| Gain | 25 dB | |
| OP1 | 14 dBm | Typical values are 18 dBm |
| OP3 | 25 dBm | Typical values are 28 dBm |
| Single Tone Spur Free Dynamic Range | >60 dBc | |
| Wideband Upconverter Specification |
| RF output | 20 MHz – 18 GHz | |
| Instantaneous Bandwidth | 2 GHz | IF input is centered at 4 GHz |
| Noise Figure | 17 – 22 dB | Typical values are 18 dB |
| Gain | 20 dB | |
| OP1 | 14 dBm | Typical values are 16 dBm |
| OP3 | 25 dBm | Typical values are 26 dBm |
| Single Tone Spur Free Dynamic Range | >55 dBc | |
Table 1: SCi Block wideband up/downconverter specifications.
The open architecture characteristics of the RF-on-mezzanine product (figure 2) align with SOSA standards. The modularity embedded in the SCi Blocks architecture allows for various combinations of upconverters or downconverters in the 3U OpenVPX form factor to support various mission configurations. It provides repeatable, highperformance without the need for manual tuning.
Figure 2: A SOSA-aligned 3U VPX module with flexible RF-on mezzanine architecture meets the SWaP-C requirements of modern military and aerospace systems
# EW Transceiver Benefits
The benefits of SCi Blocks are seen in virtually any design, such as an EW transceiver. A transceiver can be built utilizing 4 upconverters and 4 downconverters, each covering 2 GHz of the electromagnetic spectrum for a total of 8 GHz of bidirectional frequency coverage. Two SCi Blocks modules can produce 16 GHz of both receive and transmit capabilities to an EW system such as a wideband Digital Radio Frequency Memory (DRFM).
A scalable physical architecture for the 1 GbE, 10 GbE, and 40 GbE interfaces is implemented. It enables retrofitting into currently deployed systems without changing existing system software. The system on chip (SoC) may also be used to implement Vita 49.2 messaging and data path protocols for future products.
# VPX Modules for EW Systems
VPX modules are also digitally-enabled and more importantly, SOSA-aligned. This is made possible through the incorporation of the SCi Block Manager, a higher-level control function built into every module. The Manager can be programmed to execute a variety of built-in test functions, as well as control the RF performance of the module to accommodate changes in the operating environment and mission requirements. By allowing system integrators a common command and control infrastructure for various RF circuitry, the SCi Blocks Manager lends itself to much faster system integration.
Consolidating various RF front-end features in SCi 3U Open VPX modules yields another SWaP advantage leading to a unique small form factor EW system (figure 3).
Figure 3: SCi Blocks small form factor EW system
The SCi Blocks module utilizes 4 downconverters for an ES receiver to provide situational awareness. Two upconverters and downconverters are paired to produce the RF front-end for a wideband DRFM. The common command and control architecture for the SCi Blocks module along with the SOSA-aligned interfaces allows for quick and easy integration with the various Digital Signal Processing (DSP) elements and single board computers (SBCs). The combination can add new EW capabilities to small platforms such as Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) previously unavailable due to SWaP-C constraints.
# Plug-and-play Building Blocks for EW
These examples show how the SCi Blocks architecture serves as a “plug-and-play” solution for EW platforms. Three main benefits are realized with the new design approach:
Rapid system integration: A standard digital interface allows plug-and-play solutions to be efficiently designed into EW/ISR systems, saving time and money. The creation of the digital gateway results in RF solutions that are functionality similar, so every system is more efficiently developed. The DoD initiative for shorter timelines and development cycles is met.
Faster modifications: Military and aerospace systems can be modified much faster using this approach because all that is necessary is software enhancements. Traditional RF systems also had a hardware upgrade requirement, which resulted in longer turnaround times. What had traditionally taken months, or a year, can now be done in days or weeks.
Adaptability: The ability to efficiently create modular solutions that integrate various levels of RF performance depending upon the project requirements allows for greater mission flexibility. It also expands future design approaches by reducing traditional cost and time constraints.
# Conclusion
Some estimates state that 75% of the cost of a defense project is associated with integrating components and modules. Development of SCi Blocks plug-and-play digitally-enabled RF building blocks provides the solutions to meet emerging designs in a time- and cost-efficient manner. SCi Blocks also expand EW capabilities into applications that were previously limited by SWaP-C concerns.
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# SOSA and VITA Working Together for Next-Gen Defense Systems
The SOSA™ (Sensor Open Systems Architecture) Consortium is developing common open standards for designing, building, and deploying hardware, software, and firmware components of new military electronic systems. SOSA contributing members are U.S. government organizations including the U.S. DoD, Army, Navy, and Air Force, as well as key representatives from industry and universities.
SOSA adopts the most appropriate subsets of existing open standards to form a multi-purpose backbone of building blocks for current and future embedded systems for Radar, EO/IR, SIGINT, EW, and communications.
Objectives include vendor interoperability, lower procurement costs, easier new technology upgrades, quicker reaction to new requirements, and longer life cycles.
Because the emerging SOSA hardware standard draws primarily from OpenVPX and other related VITA standards, the new technologies, topologies, and environmental requirements critical to meeting SOSA objectives must be supported by extensions to these VITA standards.
This article is an overview of the SOSA and VITA organizations and how they interact, along with the challenges, successful strategies, and illustrative examples.
# Vita background and mission
Introduced to the market in 1981, the VMEbus architecture began gaining market presence with specification development and products from Motorola and other early vendors, who
QuartzXM Model 6001 8-Channel A/D & D/A Zynq UltraScale+ RFSoC Processor eXpress Module
formed the VMEbus Manufacturers Group (now VITA) in 1983.
In 1985, VITA (VMEbus International Trade Association) was founded to promote VMEbus in worldwide markets and published its first directory of 174 vendor companies and over 2,700 product families. VMEbus soon won widespread acceptance and adoption by defense, government, research, and industrial customers.
The VITA Technical Committee, formed in 1987 to develop dozens of new extensions to VMEbus, evolved in 1994 into the present-day VITA Standards Organization (VSO) . A year earlier, VITA became an accredited standards development organization with the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) .
To overcome performance limitations of the parallel bus backplane of VMEbus, in
2003 VITA introduced the VITA 46 VPX standard to take advantage of new gigabit serial interconnect technology for 3U and 6U boards. In 2010, after widespread use, refinements, and serious interest in VPX for long-term defense programs, VITA announced the VITA 65 OpenVPX system specification, quickly ratified by ANSI.
VITA continues its strong role in promoting and developing open architecture embedded system standards, actively supporting numerous working groups in the VSO, and working with vendors and other organizations to embrace new technology and meet new market requirements.
# Open Systems Architecture Directive and Initiatives
In May 2013, the U.S. Under Secretary of Defense issued a milestone memo mandating that all acquisition activity must incorporate DoD Open Systems Architecture (OSA) principles and practices. These include using existing or evolving open standards for well-defined modular hardware and software components that can be sourced from multiple vendors. Once proven, hardware platforms should be reusable for quickreaction mission needs, feature
upgrades, and new technology inser tion. Software architectures must be layered and extensible to permit operating system and security upgrades, and to accommodate new applications and user inter faces. These advantages reduce development risks and help ensure significantly longer operational life cycles.
In response, each of the three primar y U.S. ser vice branches (Army, Navy, and Air Force) , began developing standards that embraced OSA principles to meet future procurement needs of deployed systems for their respective services.
The Army ’s CCDC (Combat Capabilities Development Command) in Aberdeen, MD developed CMOSS (C4ISR/EW Modular Open Suite of Standards) . These standards include OpenVPX for hardware, VICTORY to share vehicle services (like time and position) for C4ISR/EW interoperability, and MORA (Modular Open RF Architecture) to share antennas and amplifiers. It also uses REDHAWK and SCA software frameworks.
The Navy ’s NAVAIR (Naval Air Systems Command) in Patuxent River, MD created HOST (Hardware Open Systems Technology) , which initially focused on embedded processing for airborne and ground vehicle missions. Its major goal of abstracting hardware and software components aligned well with OSA concepts. HOST hardware definitions include three tiers: Tier 1 defines the deployed platform (airframe, vehicle,
UAV, etc.) , Tier 2 defines the embedded system enclosure, and Tier 3 the boards, backplanes, modules, and faceplates. Tiers 2 and 3 are subsets of OpenVPX modules and profiles. A registry of Tier 3 products offers an approved catalog of components for sharing across programs.
The Air Force’s OMS (Open Mission Systems) initiative incorporates SOA (Ser vice Oriented Architecture) for commercially developed concepts and middleware, and UCI (Universal Command and Control Inter face) , which standardizes massages and middleware for sharing command and control mission information between airborne system elements. OMS strongly embraces FACE (Future Airborne Capability Environment) , a consor tium of The Open Group that adopts open software standards for avionics systems, which gained full support of all threearmed services.
Figure 1: After independently developing standards in response to DoD MOSA objectives, the three services joined the SOSA Consortium to develop a unified standard.
# SOSA Consortium
While each service made significant progress in advancing OSA principles, they did so through different initiatives that often-shared common open standards, including OpenVPX and FACE. However, each initiative also included specific mandates tailored for service-specific platform requirements.
After recognizing these facts, administrators within DoD and each of the services perceived a strong need to promote a single, common initiative to define acquisition activities across all three services.
In early 2017, the DoD issued an SBIR solicitation for Sensor Open System Architecture (SOSA) Architectural Research outlining the numerous OSA initiatives and objectives for a unified solution. This resulted in the formation of the SOSA Consortium managed by The Open Group, a large organization with strict and well-defined practices, policies, and procedures for standards development efforts.
A primary mandate of the SOSA Consortium is broad participation, commitment, and contribution from DoD, Army, Navy, and Air Force, as well as industry, academia, and other government organizations. Major objectives include development and adoption of open systems architecture standards for C4ISR to provide a common, multi-purpose backbone for radar, EO/IR, SIGINT, EW and countermeasure systems. Additional objectives include platform affordability, rapid fielding, re-configurability, new technology insertion, extended life cycles, and re-purposing of hardware, firmware, and software.
# Inside the SOSA Consortium
The SOSA Consortium Organization consists of two primary groups. The Business Working Group (BWG) defines business and acquisition practices and creates guidance for acquisition programs. The Technical Working Group (TWG) is responsible for defining the SOSA Architecture, and producing the SOSA Technical Standard and SOSA Reference Design.
The SOSA Architecture presents a modular system structure, with tight integration within modules for encapsulating functionality and behaviors, and yet well-defined interfaces.
These modules must be based on open, published standards, with consensusbased influence stakeholders directing the evolution, and a strict conformance validation process. The SOSA Architecture protects IP (intellectual proper ty) within the modules to incentivize innovation and competition. The SOSA Technical Standard documents the SOSA Architecture with detailed rules and requirements drawn and adapted from a collection of open standards. The primary standards defining specifications for plugin cards, backplanes, chassis, electrical components, and mechanical structures are VITA standards.
The SOSA Conformance Policy, now being defined by the SOSA Conformance Standing Committee, will define processes for qualifying products against the Technical Standard. They include multiple conformance verification processes, a single conformance certification process, and a single SOSA certified conformant product registration process. Until the award of cer tification, no product can claim to be SOSA conformant.
Membership in SOSA is restricted to US citizens and organizations so that DoDsensitive or classified requirements can be presented by representatives from the armed services to promote solution strategies within the SOSA Technical Standard. For this reason, technical details of on-going discussions in the SOSA Technical Working Group may not be disclosed to the public. Once the standard is approved and released to the public, it will contain only specifications and rules, free from the underlying, sensitive use drivers.
# VITA and SOSA
Because VITA is so central to the SOSA hardware definition, many of the same individuals in the SOSA TWG are also active participants in the VITA Standards Organization (VSO) . Because restrictions on technical disclosures imposed on the TWG by SOSA do not apply to VSO, members of VSO must be mindful against referencing on-going SOSA technical topics in their VSO discussions and publications.
Nevertheless, the TWG does release period “snapshots” of the evolving SOSA Technical Standard that are publicly available for review, the latest being Snapshot 3 released in July 2020. While no conformance to these snapshots may be claimed, they illustrate the direction and underlying principles guiding the final standard.
In some cases, SOSA adopts only carefully selected subsets of existing VITA specifications. For example, the TWG adopted only a handful of the more than one hundred 3U and 6U OpenVPX slot and module profiles, based on an analysis that they could accommodate the majority of system requirements.
User-defined backplane pins defined in OpenVPX pose a nemesis for standardization efforts because they allow custom assignment of signals with inter face standards, directions, and voltages. Profiles with user-defined pins are being deprecated in SOSA. Instead, work is under way to assign a minimum set of specific I/O standards to each group of legacy user-defined pins for each of the OpenVPX control, data, and expansion planes.
SOSA restricts the primary VPX power supplies to +12V only, prohibiting +5V, and +3.3V. This greatly simplifies the previous OpenVPX issue of balancing among three voltages to simplify chassis power supplies and standardize the plugin cards.
Unlike most OpenVPX systems, SOSA requires hardware platform management leveraging the HOST 3.0 system management architecture, which itself is highly leveraged from VITA 46.11. A system manager module accesses all SOSA system elements for census taking, health monitoring, trouble shooting, new firmware/software upgrades, and reset/recovery operations.
Backplane I/O for RF signals and optical inter faces in OpenVPX have gained significant traction in CMOSS, MORA, and HOST systems over the last six years, all enabled by VITA 66 and VITA 67 specifications. Eliminating front panel cable harnesses wins high scores for maintenance and reliability. Some of the latest modular backplane standards offer extremely high density and even mixed RF/optical inter faces as shown in Figure2.
Figure 2: Rear view of 3U OpenVPX Module with two VITA 67.3D backplane connectors, each with 10 coaxial RF signals and 24 optical l anes. Cour tesy by TE Connectivity.
In summary, when critical needs arise from SOSA customers (DoD services) , SOSA TWG members can promote innovation for new standards within the VSO to accommodate them, while still complying with SOSA restrictions.
# Next steps
The release of the SOSA Technical Standard 1.0 is expected to be released on September 20, 2021. In spite of the current public health crisis, web-based conferencing has replaced many face-toface meetings with regular on-going conference calls to help maintain the momentum. After its release, product vendors may begin the processes leading to full certification.
Never the less, vendors are now offering products that were “developed in alignment with SOSA” like the one shown in Figure 3. A key difference in the SOSA architecture from earlier open standards is the well-defined protection of IP, which encourages numerous examples of supplier innovation and investment.
The DoD is now issuing requests for proposals and information clearly favoring respondents that offer OSAbased solutions.
Figure 3 Quartz Model 5553 : 3U VPX 8-Channel A /D and D/A Gen 3 RFSoC SOSA Aligned Processor incorporates RF and optical backplane using VITA 66 or VITA 67 connectors. The top cover has been removed to show details.
The DoD is now issuing requests for proposals and information clearly favoring respondents that offer OSAbased solutions.
The active participation in SOSA by the DoD, all three-armed services, embedded industry vendors, universities, and research facilities gives evidence of their substantial commitments of resources and personnel. These clear signals ensure that SOSA is well on its way to revolutionize the future of embedded military electronics systems.
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# Conclusion
With this, the “Understanding SOSA” e-Book comes to an end. By providing key whitepapers and articles, this resource equips readers with the knowledge and understanding necessary to navigate the complexities of SOSA implementation effectively.
SOSA Technical Standards