|
JTRS Infrastructure Architecture and Standards
Don Stephens, Brian Salisbury, Kevin Richardson
In March 2005, the USD (AT&L) appointed a Joint Program Executive Officer (JPEO) for JTRS to provide an overarching management structure across all DoD JTRS programs. The JPEO JTRS was given full directive authority for all waveform, radio, and common ancillary equipment development; performance and design specifications; standards for operation of the system; and JTRS systems engineering. Three primary objectives of the JPEO are: a) time to fielded capability, b) interoperability, and c) affordability. To achieve these goals across the enterprise, the JPEO is establishing a standardized infrastructure for JTR sets.
Earlier DoD radio programs such as Speakeasy, GloMo, DMR, and others have specified APIs and infrastructure with varying measures of success. In contrast to these previous programs, the JPEO has a software code base of over 3.5 million lines of code compliant to the Software Communications Architecture (SCA). This software code base represents a foundation for future JTRS radio development.
In the first waveform porting exercises, it was observed that standardization beyond the SCA was required. While the SCA provides an excellent framework for General Purpose Processor (GPP) software, it does not specify the radio-domain specific interfaces for the waveform software to access or control radio hardware. From analysis of the software code base and waveform porting, the JPEO determined that a radio infrastructure which provides a host environment for radio waveform and applications for all DoD JTRS sets was needed. The objectives of the infrastructure were to provide a consistent operating environment for waveforms independent of physical form factor or mission. The radio infrastructure is defined for the first increment of JTRS. Future increments of the JTRS product line will incorporate infrastructure changes for advances in technology and missions.
The proposed radio infrastructure consists of a Real Time Operating System (RTOS), CORBA middleware, SCA Core Frameworks and JTRS APIs. The collection of components establishes a hardware and application software independent platform upon which JTRS assets may be developed.
|
| Donald R. Stephens, PhD, Chief Scientist, CommLargo, Inc., St. Petersburg, Florida. Dr. Stephens has most recently been participating in the JPEO JTRS as JTRS Standards Manager. His team is responsible for the establishment and standardization of the JTRS infrastructure. He has development experience with three software radios: the Digital Modular Radio (DMR), the Joint Tactical Terminal (JTT), and the Airborne Integrated Terminal Group (AITG). He has extensive experience in multiple communications and radar receiver systems including CPM, spread spectrum waveforms, wavelet video compression, and multi-spectral signal processing with companies such as Raytheon E-Systems, McDonnell Douglas, Emerson Electric, and Scientific Atlanta. He has participated in all technology facets of software radio design such as RF, DSP, distributed computing, security, and networking. |