Customers // Case Studies - General Dynamics
General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems (GD-AIS) is a leader in transformational command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance mission solutions. Among its key offerings are command and control for tactical/strategic weapons, information operations, surveillance, and reconnaissance.
The Challenge:
GD-AIS was seeking an advanced engineering team to work in close collaboration with their technical group to provide comprehensive board, FPGA and low-level software designs for a multi-generational radar processor development effort. Daunting performance requirements and the need for customer ownership of the product IP eliminated COTS products as viable solutions. Central to the project was the use of open interfaces and commercial standards for all communications paths, as well as for the system backplane. But the complexity and very high speed of the design not only required leading-edge technical abilities, but also a close, strategic partnership with GD-AIS.
"ADI Engineering's technical performance has been outstanding in providing developmental products and engineering services to our Surface Warfare Systems programs at General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems,” said Larry Smith, SWS Radar Group Program Manager and Technical Director. “We view ADI Engineering as a key strategic partner on these open architecture programs in helping ensure our successful on-time delivery of high quality systems and solutions to our customers."
The Solution:
ADI engaged early in the project, and quickly identified architectures that met the highly complex, demanding technical requirements. AdvancedTCA (ATCA) was selected by ADI as the format for the radar processing blade, and ADI has provided all hardware design and production services, from initial architectural design to board design, PCB layout, FPGA design, integration and test, and manufacturing.
ADI has been developing a multi-generational family of ATCA radar processing blades for GD-AIS continuously since 2002, making ADI one of the longest established, most experienced ATCA developers. ADI has also developed other ATCA products for GD-AIS, including direct IF sampling A/D conversion modules with 10 Gigabit Ethernet sample data transport, digital receiver/exciter interfaces, and antenna controllers.
ADI's ATCA designs for GD-AIS provide unprecedented signal processing performance far outperforming COTS FPGA modules and DSP blades, while ADI's Open IP business model provides GD-AID with the design IP ownership that is a key program requirement conventional COTS vendors cannot meet. ADI's latest ATCA design for GD-AIS utilizes 16 high-end Xilinx FPGAs in a unique architecture delivering 260 Gbps sustained I/O bandwidth via thirteen 10 gigabit Ethernet ports to multiple A/D converters and downstream processors, with real-time down conversion, equalization filtering and beamforming on multiple radar inputs. An AMCC PowerPC processor provides command and control capabilities.
The ATCA designs showcase ADI’s leading edge hardware design capabilities. With many digital signals operating at 10 GHz, ADI delivered a comprehensive timing constraints-driven design methodology and thorough signal integrity analysis. The result has been a first-pass success with every generation of the ATCA radar processor since program inception in 2002, with fully functional boards consistently delivered on time and on budget at each generational step.