Edgewater Demonstrates Databus Technology

Canadian embedded technology company Edgewater Computer Systems said it successfully demonstrated its data bus technology in a joint industry flight demonstration. The company said its Extended 1553, or E1553, was tested in December on a U.S. Navy A-3 jet aircraft operated by Raytheon in Van Nuys, Calif. Edgewater said the technology increases the data throughput on the 1553 bus by upwards of 200 times over legacy 1553B without the need for rewiring or changing the existing infrastructure of the platform. The technology, which is also known as Mil-Std 1553B Notice 5, was previously demonstrated in a number of developmental and simulation environments including the C-130, F-16 and F-18, the company said. In the December test, E1553 was coupled onto the internal 1553 Navigation Bus of the A-3, which also hosted other legacy 1553 line replaceable units communicating on the same bus. Raytheon verified no bus errors were reported on the legacy 1553 equipment during the flight. The rate monitor maintained a consistent connection of greater than 100 Mbps through the entire flight. Edgewater said it ran live streaming video along with bi-directional, bulk-data transfers in order to maximize the network capacity of the bus while maintaining a 10E-12 bit error ratio. The current generation of E1553 technology, which is limited to about 100Mbps due to FPGA performance restrictions, performed as expected, the company said. Edgewater's ASIC based solution, due to be released this year, will be capable of supporting substantially higher throughput. "Adding high capacity networking across the existing 1553 bus without changing the legacy software or disrupting the legacy communications has tremendous implications vis-à-vis an open-architecture approach for cost-effective, robust networking and promotes key interfaces that enable substantial increases in capability with minimal impact to the war fighter," said Gerard Walles, director, Open Architecture AIR-4.5 and F/A 18 S&T Group Leader, PMA-265, NAVAIR. More