1. Concepts For Additional Revenue Creation Within The Embedded Land
Vehicle Vetronics Community Eco- System
James Falasco
Product Segment Leader
GE Fanuc Intelligent Platforms
High Speed Computing & Graphics
5201 Regent Road, Irving, Tx. 75081, USA
972-536-8410
james.falasco@ge.com
Keywords:
Embedded Simulation, FPGA, Modeling, Distributed Simulation, Computer
Generated Forces, Embedded Training, Sensors, UGV, Vetronics, Data Compression
ABSTRACT: The military market worldwide is adopting new embedded vetronics technology to assist the currant war
fighter in their approach to countering both traditional and asymmetrical threats. Trends are beginning to emerge that
are creating a tighter coupling of various disconnected sub assemblies into a scalable embedded computing paradigm.
GE Fanuc Intelligent Platforms product portfolio has the breath to allow a vetronics designer mix and match flexibility
to aggregate solution requirements in the vertical applications reviewed below. This aggregation of “boxes” gives the
platform maker an ability to recover / improve margins; while providing the war fighter a lower cost per unit platform.
As today’s war fighter moves more and more into an approach where either mounted or dismounted he will interact
with his supporting vehicle infrastructure it becomes obvious that our currant net-centric world will be mapped into the
military vetronics space. Using a combination of computers, lasers, navigation modules, radios, and other
technologically advanced equipment to improve war fighter’s ability to communicate on the battlefield allows this to
seamlessly occur. The catalyst that is evolving to synthesize the various aspects of military vetronics seems to be
Situational awareness. Comprehension of observations is the essence of situational awareness. Law enforcement
officers use situational awareness on a daily basis. Studies show that situational awareness has three levels of critical
factors. GE Fanuc Intelligent Platforms enabling technology assists the development and fielding of solution sets for
each one of these critical factors The three factors are; know your route; know who inhabits your route and their
tendencies and motivations; know current intelligence. Know Your Route: You get a transmission of an incident in
southwest Baghdad. Your unit cranks up and gets ready to roll. You want to know the best route and best way to
approach the area. You want to know what to expect along the way and what might have changed when you get there.
All these issues compose the situational awareness scenario and will change constantly depending on the circumstances.
It is for this reason that we must provide the war fighter with a scalable solution that can be rapidly reconfigured
depending upon the scenario itself. Know who inhabits your route and their tendencies and motivations: Clearly, it is
impossible for the war fighter to have an in-depth knowledge about the all the potential threats along the way It would
be possible though to keep updated information on known strong points,places of population congregation , known local
Leaders, etc. that could be analyzed and compared with new intelligence reports. The result would be a “fused” picture
that when generated as the action plan could then be communicated and progress measured against. ; Know current
intelligence: The aspect of this need can again be addressed very much from lessons learned by the law enforcement
community. Be able to place on the screen vehicles that show recent bodywork, extra fuel tanks, or antennas. Total
situational awareness is gained through increased comprehension of what we observe. It results in a greater ability to
make short-term predictions about what is going to happen and therefore make decisions regarding our response.
Comprehension is gained through education, training and experience. If you attain total situational awareness you will
be better able to prevent, respond and dominate the digitized battlefield .
2. 1. Military Land Vehicle Vetronics
Market Review
The military land vetronics ecosystem consists of a
number of sub categories. The purpose of this paper is
to addresses the various categories and suggests
opportunities for value add to those in the eco-system
and to those supplying to the ecosystem. Categories
reviewed are; situational awareness, networked man
portable technology, VHMS, (vehicle health
monitoring systems), sensor payload modeling &
simulation, embedded training, additional vehicle
computing modules.
Figure 1: Typical Land Vetronics Platform
2. Situational Awareness
Land Vehicle Situational Awareness provides the war
fighter with the capability to monitor his environment
in real time all the time. Situational awareness (SA)
involves awareness of what is happening around you
to understand how information, events, and your own
reactions will impact your goals and objectives, both
now and in the future. Lacking SA or having limitied
or inadequate SA has been identified as one of the
primary factors of military platform occunpant
fatalities. Having fully accurate and up-to-the-minute
data for today’s warfighter is a major design concern.
SA has been recognized as a critical, yet often elusive,
foundation for successful decision-making across a
broad range of deployed and planned vehicle
platforms. Today’s designers are turning more and
more to the comcept of emebedded situational
awarness combined with the ability to leverage the
same assemblies into training nodes. This thinking
maximizes space on the vehicle and assists in driving
down program costs. The war fighter can both fight
and train on the same system.
3. Networked Man Portable Technology
Today’s war fighter interacts with manned vehicle
platforms through a variety of wearable technology
that enables them to participate in individual and
collective synthetic environment training and mission
rehearsal exercises either being tethered to computer
systems, trackers or infrastructure or untethered . This
interactive virtual reality driven environment provides
an unparalleled level of natural movement and
interaction to the entire training experience. In
essence you have taken the classroom out into the field
and allow the warrior to train the way he will fight.
Technologies that are enablers to this approach revolve
around video compressuin , data acquisition ,
information storage and retrievel. Scalability of
hardware solutions and the ability to provide
computing infrastructure that can evolve as the
applications and mission scenarios change and evolve
are key drivers in this area.
4. VHMS (Vehicle Health Monitoring
Systems)
Today's military land vehicles are very complex
platforms They are no longer simply iron boxes with
mechanical controls that use an electrical spark to
ignite the gasoline. They are now complex networks of
microprocessor controlled devices that manage
weapons systems and interact with a variety of other
war fighting platforms. As military ground vehicle
manufacturers move to become total system suppliers,
they are offering more then a weapons platform of
transportation. They are offering constant connectivity
with technologies like GPS, display systems, integrated
satellite communications & embedded situational
awareness and training capability. At the lowest level,
where microprocessors are integrated into the system,
they now have the ability to incorporate an artificial
intelligence driven technology set . Therefore those
same microprocessors can begin to take a more active
role in the diagnostics process. Subjective decisions
can be made about whether to shut down the platform,
to warn the driver, to record values for the service
technician, to record environmental conditions, to
synthesize information to keep the platform running.
In many of these systems, the sensors will be
distributed across several subsystems. Diagnostic
evaluations will incorporate elements from each of the
subsystems where the data will be networked
throughout the platform . Enabling ground vehicles
with this type of diagnostic capability will allow the
war fighter to squeeze additional years of performance
3. out of any platform thus enabled. Another side benefit
is the quicker return of units to operational status when
minor issues can be addressed before they would
become major serviceability issues. GE Fanuc
Intelligent Platforms has products in its portfolio that
can be integrated to provide the war fighter with
scalable vehicle diagnostic solution sets.
5. Sensor Payload Modeling & Simulation
A key component to creating sensor payload modeling
& simulation in embedded sensor design is integrating
FPGA computing into the mix. The FPGA can be best
described as a parallel device that makes it faster than
software. FPGAs as programmable “ASICs” can be
configured for high performance processing, excelling
at continuous, high bandwidth applications.
FPGAs can provide inputs from digital and analog
sensors —LVDS, Camerink, RS170 — with which the
designer can interactively apply filters, do processing,
compression, image reconstruction and encryption time
of applications. Examples of the flexibility of this
approach using COTS Modules hosted by a COTS
multiprocessing base platform are shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2: Typical FPGA COTS Processing Model
Sensors exist to detect and measure all physical states.
For example: time, temperature, pressure, torque,
speed, acceleration, distance, density, color, edges,
shapes, counts, volume, etc. There are sensors to
measure anything for which a value can be assigned to
it. Collections of sensors can also detect and measure
non-physical information: stress, truthfulness, and pain.
These values are determined with some algorithm that
synthesizes the information and allows analysis to be
made. Enabling FPGA code is a big assist in this area
and a example package GE Fanuc Intelligent Platforms
provides for designers use.
6.Embedded Training
Today’s war fighter spends many hours learning how
to operate the vehicle they are assigned to and engage
with the various sub assemblies involved. Usually the
training takes place in a classroom environment and
attempts to recreate the realistic feeling of a field
deployment. With increasing frequency the thinking is
drifting to allowing the crew to gain training familiarity
within the actual platform while deployed. The goal of
Embedded Training is to allow the crewman to hone
their skills in vehicle operation. They accomplish
this task by engaging in simulation that requires the
user to utilize the vehicle facilities as if under a normal
Operational State. At the end of the training scenario,
the crewman will get to review the results of the
session as well as results of previous sessions to check
progression An example of the type of rugged
hardware needed to facilitate this task is depicted in
FIG 3.
Dimensions
6.77” x 9.25” x 3.25”
172 mm x 235 mm x 82 mm
Power dissipation
85 Watts (at maximum clock specifications)
Input voltage - 28 VDC
Figure 3: Rugged Embedded Training Hardware
7. Additional Vehicle Computing Modules
A military ground vehicle’s vetronics is composed of a
variety of processing nodes. Some nodes are used for
vehicle control and management while others are used
allow the weapons systems to function. These nodes
and applications usually represent the “fixed “ units in
that they come with the system and are upgraded on a
technical insertion roadmap that allows the vehicle
manufacturer a chance to take advantage of reduction
in size, weight, heat and cost while improving overall
performance. The second category of additional
vetronics computing modules is those associated with
PMC P14
LVDS
64
XMC P16
RocketIO
8
XMC P15
8
RocketIO GPIO
QDR2 SRAM
2M x 36
DDR2 SDRAM
64M x 32
DDR2 SDRAM
64M x 32
DDR2 SDRAM
64M x 32
DDR2 SDRAM
64M x 32
QDR2 SRAM
2M x 36
300MHz
267MHz267MHz
300MHz
5
SPI
CPLD
Virtex 5
FF1136
Package
LX110T
SX95T FX??T
JTAGJTAG
JTAG CLOCKS
I/O Header
Ethernet RGMII Logic Analyser LVDS RS232
BMM
Clock
Generator
Power
Manager
Serial Flash
128Mbit
Configuration/General Purpose
Serial Flash
128Mbit
Serial Flash
128Mbit x 3
SPI
PMC P14
LVDS
64
XMC P16
RocketIO
8
XMC P15
8
RocketIO GPIO
QDR2 SRAM
2M x 36
DDR2 SDRAM
64M x 32
DDR2 SDRAM
64M x 32
DDR2 SDRAM
64M x 32
DDR2 SDRAM
64M x 32
DDR2 SDRAM
64M x 32
DDR2 SDRAM
64M x 32
DDR2 SDRAM
64M x 32
DDR2 SDRAM
64M x 32
QDR2 SRAM
2M x 36
300MHz
267MHz267MHz
300MHz
5
SPI
CPLD
Virtex 5
FF1136
Package
LX110T
SX95T FX??T
JTAGJTAG
JTAG CLOCKS
I/O Header
Ethernet RGMII Logic Analyser LVDS RS232
BMM
Clock
Generator
Power
Manager
Serial Flash
128Mbit
Configuration/General Purpose
Serial Flash
128Mbit
Serial Flash
128Mbit x 3
Serial Flash
128Mbit
Configuration/General Purpose
Serial Flash
128Mbit
Serial Flash
128Mbit x 3
SPI
4. the mission specific aspects of the vehicle platform.
Vehicle processing node examples are
SIGINT,ELINT, C4ISR ,C2, UAV management and
IED neutralization
8. Future Plans
As ground military vehicles vetronics evolves a short-
term challenge is looming that could easily drift to the
right. Military planners have issued directives
mandating tactical vehicles carry enough up- armor to
insure a higher survivability against IED’s and RPG
rounds. The added weight dramatically reduces the
weight /space budget for onboard electronics. Going
forward this will cause much trade-off analysis to be
done. GE Fanuc Intelligent Platforms product portfolio
allows the systems designer to mix and match modules
to integrate the most cost effective payload processing
elements possible.
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