Abaco Systems has been awarded a contract to provide FPGA processor subsystems for the US Air Force’s C4ISR modernisation programme.
The orders were placed by an unnamed prime contractor. The upgrade programme will involve the deployment of a sensor processing / electronic countermeasures (ECM) solution across multiple airborne platforms by the USAF.
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The five-year contract is valued at around $8m and requires Abaco to deliver hundreds of subsystems comprising its rugged VP881 FPGA processing board, together with FMC216 and FMC116 FMCs, as a single-source solution.
Abaco Systems chief growth office John Muller said: “In advanced electronic warfare applications, FPGA technology provides the flexibility to rapidly implement responses to emerging threats.
“The solution we proposed reflects that need for straightforward reconfigurability, as well as the customer’s requirement for high bandwidth and advanced processing capability, on an open COTS platform.”
The VP881 system has a high degree of integration and functional density that allowed the customer to replace multiple boards with a single board.
This capability allows for reducing a legacy 12-slot 6U VPX system to a six-slot 3U VPX system.
In addition, the optional Firefly upgrade enabled greater throughput.
The 3U VPX VP881 FPGA processing board is suitable for challenging mission-critical military applications such as electronic warfare / DRFM, radar / sonar image processing, and satellite communications systems.
It can also be used in support of multichannel digital transmission / reception and advanced digital beamforming.
The system is equipped with US semiconductor manufacturing firm Xilinx’s Ultrascale and Zynq Ultrascale+ technology.
In February, Abaco secured a contract to deliver solutions for the modernisation of radar systems of two classes of jet fighter for the USAF.
