Advanced radar systems that can detect targets in complex, high-clutter environments are essential for mission-critical operations such as defense, search and rescue, and offshore security. Radar systems provide activity monitoring, target detection and classification, guidance, and encroachment notification. Additionally, phased array radar systems, which reinforce antenna signals in desired directions and suppress them in others, can perform search, track, and guidance functions for scores of simultaneous targets.

10 Gigabit Ethernet ubiquity, performance, and portability make it an attractive high-speed interconnect for such real-time high-bandwidth situational awareness systems. But applications like those above have a unique set of connectivity requirements not encountered in typical commercial applications. The requirements include:

• a truly rugged interface able to withstand extreme physical and temperature conditions

• absorbing extended duration bursts of incoming sensor data at full line-rate, without missing data;

• synthesizing multi-dimensional models of the environment by synchronously fusing data from a variety of sensors through highly accurate or precise timestamps;

• performing intense real-time application processing that surpasses the capacity of modern processors and does not swamp the host bus;

The common theme above is that the special connectivity requirements can only be performed while the data is still in the sensor Ethernet interface. Once incoming data has exited the interface and made its way to the processor or internal distribution fabric, it’s too late to absorb, accurately time-stamp, or perform the line-rate application processing.

AdvancedIO’s programmable connectivity enables customers to perform critical application processing in the sensor interface, where it needs to happen.  AdvancedIO’s modules can form the direct data streaming link between first-stage RF signal and second-stage beamforming radar processing by accepting payload data from sensors and wrapping it into Ethernet packets for transmission over 10 Gigabit Ethernet links and networks. It comes with advanced APIs that support multi-core and multi-thread architectures used in modern radar systems.