White Paper

WHITE PAPER Rappid: A modular, application-ready spectrum processing platform mrcy.com 2 mrcy.com 2 These two drivers are leading the electronic warfare (EW) industry to a crossroads. We can choose to continue the existing strategy of long-lead, custom-designed systems, or we can find a new approach that has the agility to take the most advanced technologies and make them profoundly more accessible to the defense industry. Current attempts to update the existing strategy have focused on open hardware standards, such as OpenVPX™ and SOSA™. Through these standards, EW system designers can reduce both the integration cost and system upgrade complexity. However, at the subsystem level, there continues to be a high degree of software and firmware customization that limits the ability to make upgrades and to deploy the latest spectrum processing algorithms to existing systems. A new and more holistic approach is needed, one that expands on the open hardware concept to enable spectrum processing systems to incorporate the latest technologies across hardware, firmware and software. A solution where deploying a new EW technique is as easy as downloading a mobile phone app. CLOSED SYSTEMS DELAY TECHNOLOGY INSERTION Traditionally, spectrum processing systems are designed for specific applications. While these systems can include open hardware, there is often some customization to the hardware around the specific interface requirements. Additionally, both the firmware for the low-latency FPGA processing and the software for high-performance CPU/ GPU computing are designed for the specific hardware. These complex interdependencies between hardware, firmware and software drive a lengthy development cycle. Additionally, the closed nature of the design limits the ability to deploy upgrades in the form of new hardware or new firmware/ software capabilities. For example, after identifying a new electronic threat and then developing an EW technique to counter it, the new EW technique would require significant customization before it could be loaded onto an existing EW system. Additionally, adding a new firmware/software capability might require a hardware modification. This apparently simple task of installing a capability to protect against a new threat can suddenly become slow and costly. DELIVERING THE LATEST TECHNOLOGY Through an open platform, new EW techniques and other spectrum processing applications can be loaded more quickly into a range of systems that are based on different hardware. This accelerated technology deployment is precisely what is required for success in an environment of rapidly emerging electronic threats and continued dominance of the electromagnetic spectrum. Additionally, an open approach to spectrum processing adds value across the system life cycle: ▪ Development: Reduce development costs with an application-ready framework ▪ Deployment: Deploy defense capabilities faster than adversaries ▪ Sustainment: Deliver new capabilities to multiple systems by leveraging the open platform OPEN HARDWARE, OPEN FIRMWARE, OPEN SOFTWARE The key to a fully open spectrum processing platform is the ability to integrate open hardware, open firmware and open software. While previous work has focused on open hardware and, to a lesser extent, open software, there is currently no industry-wide standard for common FPGA firmware development and interfacing. Without a standard approach for developing and interfacing FPGA firmware, there is minimal opportunity for capability reuse on different systems. A standard must be adopted if the FPGA processing capabilities are expected to be abstracted from the hardware and reused across multiple systems. Additionally, incorporating open hardware and firmware into systems would be incomplete if open software was not included as well. Custom software provides the benefit of a unique and focused solution for a specific application. However, leveraging complex and capable applications across multiple systems with differing hardware requires the adoption of abstracted methods of software development. Over the last decade, the pace of technology development across all industries has continued to accelerate, including our adversaries' ability to harness these new technologies in the battle for control of the electromagnetic spectrum.

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