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        Mistral-Solutions

Dear Customer,Anees

Warm Greetings for the New Year 2014!

The year 2013 has been a defining year for the Indian Defense Industry with several significant achievements. India’s first indigenously built ballistic missile submarines Arihant was launched for sea trials in August, the locally built aircraft carrier Vikrant was also launched in August and the INS Vikramaditya was finally commissioned in November. India also established ICBM (Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile) capability this year with the launch and successful second test of Agni-V. The formal induction of the Light Combat Aircraft Tejas, into the Indian Air Force was initiated last month. These overwhelming successes and developments undertaken by the MOD and DRDO are truly applaudable and we are proud to be associated with the industry.

Mistral took part in the 9th edition of The International Radar Symposium India 2013 which was recently held in Bangalore. It was our privilege to have been invited by DRDO along with our other industrial partners for a healthy discourse on our longstanding association. Ramanan JV, General Manager- Engineering from Mistral was given an opportunity to air the challenges and concerns faced, helping us work towards a more successful association. Our partner, Esterel Technologies, presented an interesting paper at the IRSI on using SCADE Display for the design of Radar Human-Machine Interfaces (HMI). Further details on the paper have been shared with you in this newsletter.

This edition of Infowaves also brings you information on two indigenously designed Mistral products – IFF-CIU which is a Communication Interface module part of the IFF Radar and the Dual Node PCM Telemetry Encoder. Also featured is the Champ-WB-DRFM card from our partner Curtiss-Wright which is designed to meet the challenging needs of embedded high-performance digital signal and image processing applications. This issue also includes an article on a Low power, tunable Telecommand receiver cum decoder and a case study on a small form factor, rugged, high-definition telemetry based Digital video recorder designed by Mistral.

We look forward to hearing from you with your feedback and thoughts on the issue. We hope to continue bringing you insightful information and novel solutions in the forthcoming issues. We from Mistral also wish the defense and aerospace community a successful Defexpo India 2014.

Wishing you a successful quarter ahead!

Sincerely,
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Anees Ahmed
CEO

NEW PRODUCTS/SERVICES
   
IFF - Communication Interface Unit (IFF-CIU)
   
Dual Node PCM Encoder
   
CHAMP-WB-DRFM Digital RF Memory Card Launched From Curtiss-Wright
 
ARTICLES
   
Low Power, Tunable Telecommand Receiver Cum Decoder – Article
   
Designing A High-definition, Rugged Digital Video Recorder – Case Study
   
SCADE Display® For Airborn And Ground-based Radar HMIs – White Paper
 
NEWS AND EVENTS
   
Curtiss-Wright Acquires Parvus Corporation
   
 

 

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IFF - Communication Interface Unit (IFF-CIU) Designed And Developed By Mistral

The Communication Interface Unit (CIU) designed by Mistral is a part of the Identification Friend or Foe Radar and manages communications between the Interrogator, RADAR Controller and Encoder. Mistral’s CIU is an FPGA based platform which can be used for effective communication between the above subsystems.

Being an FPGA based platform, the CIU unit allows the flexibility to modify the communication protocols based on requirements. The CIU extracts Radar angle information from the encoder interface signals and communicates the same to the relevant IFF subsystem. Apart from this, it receives messages from the IFF interrogator, Radar processor and pedestal controller through RS422 and Gigabit Ethernet communication channels. The relevant information is interpreted, unpacked & packed and forwarded to the respective subsystems.

CIU also supports remote FPGA re-configuration and has been qualified to confirm to Environmental (MIL-810F) and EMI-EMC (MIL 461E) based tests.

Dual Node PCM Encoder Designed And Developed By Mistral

The Dual Node Encoder is a microcontroller and FPGA based telemetry that provides end- user with the luxury of configuring two 1553B channels as per user requirements Pulse Code Modulation (PCM) Telemetry is a way of acquiring data in one location, converting the data samples to digital words, encoding the data in a serial digital format, and transmitting it on a carrier to another location for decoding and analysis. PCM systems are less susceptible to noise than analog systems, and the digital data is easier to transmit, record, and analyze.

Mistral has developed various rugged telemetry modules for flight/mission critical applications, along with various decoder software, for ground station data extractions.

CHAMP-WB-DRFM Digital Rf Memory Card From Curtiss-Wright

The CHAMP-WB is the first entry in Curtiss-Wright Controls Defense Solutions’ family of user-programmable Virtex®-7 FPGA-based computing products, designed to meet the needs of challenging embedded high-performance digital signal and image processing applications. The CHAMP-WB is targeted specifically at wide-band, low latency applications that require large FPGA processing, wide input/output requirements, with minimal latency. When combined with the TADF- 4300 module, featuring 12 GS/s 8-bit ADC technology and 12 GS/s 10-bit DAC technology from Tektronix, an extremely high performance wide-band DRFM system can be created. The combined card-set is called the CHAMP-WB-DRFM

The CHAMP-WB-DRFM couples the dense processing resources of a single large Xilinx Virtex-7 FPGA with a high-bandwidth 12 GS/s 8-bit ADC and 12 GS/s 10-bit DAC module in a commercial grade or rugged 6U OpenVPX™ (VITA 65) form factor module.

 

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Low Power, Tunable Telecommand Receiver Cum Decoder –Article By Srinivas MG Of Mistral Solutions

A telecommand is sent to control a remote system or systems not directly connected to the place from which the telecommand originates and this science is known as Telemetry. Most of these systems are onboard military aircrafts or ships and have to undergo stipulated certification before deployment. For a telecommand to be effective, it must be modulated onto a carrier wave which is then transmitted with adequate power to the remote system. The remote system then demodulates the digital signal from the carrier, decodes the telecommand and executes it

This article focuses on the key design considerations while designing a Low power, tunable Telecommand receiver cum Decoder.

Designing A High-Definition, Rugged Digital Video Recorder – Case Study By Mistral Solutioms

Digital Video recorders are employed in several demanding defense and homeland security applications like Airborne Video recorder systems, Real time Data acquisition systems, Telemetry systems and Video surveillance systems & security solutions. They are expected to be rugged, small, lightweight systems capable of multi-channel HD video recording with playback.

This case study showcases Mistral’s expertise in designing a flexible and easily upgradeable Video recording & processing solution with high resolution & frame rate for defense and aerospace applications.

SCADE Display® For Airborn And Ground-based Radar Human-Machine Interfaces (HMIs) – White Paper From Esterel Technologies

Radar displays have evolved over time from being pure mechanically-driven devices (oscilloscopes) able of displaying raw video showing the operators the detected and amplified target return signal (and the receiver noise) to more evolved, computer-based, interfaces where digital processing allows cleaning up the display by eliminating noise and clutter, and creating precise symbols for each target. Today, dedicated software application HMIs allow displaying and controlling multiple radar units and associated peripherals, in order to provide users with intuitive and simple display allowing obtaining the best performance from their surveillance system.

This paper shows how the SCADE Display model-based approach promoted by Esterel Technologies provides solutions for challenges faced when applied to mission-critical embedded software for radar HMIs.

 

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Curtiss-Wright Acquires Parvus Corporation

Curtiss-Wright Controls, Inc. recently announced the acquisition of 100% shares of Parvus Corporation (Parvus), a business unit of Eurotech S.p.A., for $38 million in cash. Parvus is a leading designer and manufacturer of rugged small form factor computers and communications subsystems for the aerospace, defense, homeland security and industrial markets. The acquired business will operate within Curtiss-Wright's Controls segment.

As a result of this acquisition, Mistral now offers SWaP-optimized solutions including Rugged Processor Systems, mobile networking Subsystems and Industrial Grade Board-Level PC/104 Modules which are used in critical defense applications such as unmanned systems and tactical C4ISR payloads.

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