White Paper

1 OpenRFM ™ - A Better Alternative For An Open Architecture to Support EW, EA and SIGINT Applications Introduction Within the defense industrial base, adherence to standards such as IEEE and ISO are nothing new. However, there has been very little standards based activity that was borne out of defense. Meaning, when a standards based approach is called for, almost all of the standards based activities come out of the commercial sector. This is not surprising since much of the work within defense and defense electronics is centered around platforms designed to meet very specific defense applications. Applications where standards based solutions are difficult to design, engineer and develop. This is particularly true within RF and Microwave based defense applications where modular, interoperable, open architecture based solutions have been slow to develop. In fact, to date, little progress has been made in developing open systems architectures within technologies that support RF and Microwave based Electronic Warfare applications. Industry for sure has seen successes in developing, promoting and adhering to open standards based activities. ANSI (American National Standards Institute), the non-profit organization that oversees the development and sus- tainment of standards across many products and service categories, dates back to 1918. IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) was founded as IEEE in 1963, but its origins go back to 1884. ISO (International Standards Organization) has its origins dating back to 1926 and was re-formed as ISO in 1946. More recent standards organiza- tions have sprung up during the post-world wide web era. One notable web era standards body is OASIS (Organiza- tion for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards). OASIS, another non-profit based standards organi- zation, has overseen several web based and web services standards since 1993. So standardization of technology solutions and open architectures clearly can and do work. This white paper will address the issue of open systems architectures and highlight actions Mercury Systems is taking in the latest, and in our view, most important open architecture discussion in all of defense electronics. This white paper: • Looks at the changing climate within defense electronics and the government and DoD drive towards open standards • Highlights the challenges faced around standardizing RF and microwave based solutions • Highlights OpenRFM as a new model in developing technologies for Electronic Warfare and related applications • Explains why OpenRFM can change the game in building modular, interoperable and affordable solutions within EW, EA and SIGINT

• Cover