back to article Get ready for software-defined RADAR: Jam, eavesdrop, talk and target ... simultaneously

With a big RF transmitter and enough fast computing power, you have the ability to do a lot of different things, as evidenced by a General Electric presentation on "software-defined radar" at the GPU conference this year. At GTC 13 last year, GE gave a standing-room-only presentation about how it's using RDMA (Remote Direct …

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  1. Will Stephenson

    Effectors

    Sounds more and more like the Culture's effectors: http://theculture.wikia.com/wiki/Effector

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Software Defined *.*

      Referring to the DoD JTRS fiasco, a very wise man once said,

      "Software Defined Radio technology has done for military communications what the Space Shuttle has done for inexpensive spaceflight."

      1. Dave 126

        Re: Software Defined *.*

        A very wise old man with a sense of irony, I assume?

        'Generic Price Per Pound Calculation' [ of the Space Shuttle programme vs one-use launchers:

        http://www.futron.com/upload/wysiwyg/Resources/Whitepapers/Space_Transportation_Costs_Trends_0902.pdf

        The Space Shuttle wasn't the cheapest way of getting mass into orbit.

      2. danolds

        Re: Software Defined *.*

        Ok, that cracked me up, made me spit Sprite Zero on my keyboard. Are you happy now?

  2. Semtex451

    K1 Applications Poster

    Ubisofts G.R.A.W the example for man-wearables, nice and dramatic.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    And does it brew a mean expresso too?

    Always handy when you're pulling himmelmans at 7G while listening to DAB radio.....

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    If warmongers had any intelligence (and less testosterone) to start with they would not got to war,

    So bringing artificial intelligence to the battlefield might be the best way to bring an end to conflicts....

    1. WonkoTheSane
      Mushroom

      "So bringing artificial intelligence to the battlefield might be the best way to bring an end to conflicts...."

      yeah, that turned out real well in "The Terminator", didn't it?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        That wasn't artificial intelligence mate, that was artificial macho - shoot first think later - stupidity

  5. A Twig

    Very similar to Software Defined Radio - which has been knocking around for ages and still hasn't really delivered much in the way of the promised future "comms revolution" that was promised when I did some work on it in 2009/10...

    That said, it does sound pretty awesome from my own geeky PoV, and I would love to have a play with such a system, but I have somehow have doubts that it will be mainstream enough for a while yet!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      No impact...

      ...other than DVBT, DAB, 3G, 4G, Wifi, DVBS, Digital Radio Mondiale, etc. Whilst there's hardware ASICs behind some of those things they're just hard coded versions of someone's initial software / firmware implementation.

      1. A Twig

        Re: No impact...

        Fair point, I don't disagree.

        However the very fact that hardware ASICs are being used in commercial implementations means that SDR is still a way away from the concept of "wideband antennas/antennae which receive everything and dump it straight into software processing to pick out the bits you want" which it was initially portrayed as, and was what I was working on.

    2. toxicdragon

      Its not really the same as having your own system but there are quite a few online SDRs, I go on http://www.160m.net/ myself. (requires Java)

  6. Roger Stenning
    Boffin

    Interesting...

    ..but I can't help but wonder how much of a service life (mean time between failure) such kit would have; given the multitude of activities that the equipment would have to be servicing, the duty cycle of all components in the kit would have to be near 100% when switched on and operational; that would require some serious over-engineering to take into account the heat build-up that this would generate. On ground-based kit, that wouldn't be so much of a problem, as fans, cooling systems, et al, don't have to be that small in that location - but in a small place like a military combat aircraft? That's going to be a challenge to overcome.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: service life (mean time between failure)

      but presumably (altho simplistically) for military kit, the MTF only has to be somewhat longer than the MTBBBUBTEIC (mean time before being blown up by the enemy in combat) to be useful

      1. Canopus

        Re: service life (mean time between failure)

        I beg to differ....

        The MTF should be considerably shorter than the MTBBBUBTEIC in order to maximise the suppliers MMAROPALP (Mandatory Maintenance & Replacement of Parts at Ludicrous Prices).

        After all it's only our taxes paying for this... :-)

        1. paulc

          Re: service life (mean time between failure)

          what amused me was that there were components on the Typhoon (Eurofighter) that had calculated MTBFs of many thousands of hours so weren't expected to be replaced at all during the lifetime of the airframe and so were buried into the airframe when built with no easy means of access for replacement... what happened just a few years down the project was a modification program which was to upgrade said components to improve their functionality which as a result of them having being buried deep within the airframe required serious expense to get them out and replace them then "rebuild" the aircraft around them...

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Interesting...

      "On ground-based kit, that wouldn't be so much of a problem, as fans, cooling systems, et al, don't have to be that small in that location - but in a small place like a military combat aircraft? That's going to be a challenge to overcome."

      Yes, packaging the necessary hardware to create flows of cooling air in an aircraft would be a real problem!

      1. Roger Stenning

        Re: Interesting...

        Frankly, yes, that IS a problem; in an aircraft capable of supersonic flight, any opening to the ambient supersonic air has the potential to rip the fuselage wide open due to the forces involved. Yes, you could potentially bleed air into a cooling vent via a secondary intake from within the air intakes for the engines prior to the air entering the turbine blades, but then the problem becomes one of slowing this resulting air down to manageable velocities to be useful in any cooling system. A friend of mine worked for many years as an avionics technician (and later as a team leader) in the RAF for many years, and I'm reliably informed that this is a very real problem.

    3. danolds

      Re: Interesting...

      Yeah, I know what you mean. I've wondered about that stuff too, whether any system could withstand the kind of punishment it would receive on a real battlefield. But, damn, they ruggedize the hell out of their gear. You can see a bit of it in this video I shot at GTC13 http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/04/10/ge_ruggedised_systems/

      They also pay a lot of attention to thermals. I don't know if you can see this in the video, but the metal casings around their system is very thick, they do this to make it stronger of course, but the enclosure also acts as a huge heat sink. It was just over room temperature when I touched it, but they assured me that it was engineered to handle much more heat than could be generated at a well attended trade show.

  7. McHack

    The technology needs further advancement

    After all, Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a big gun.

    We need software-defined weaponry.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: The technology needs further advancement

      Software combined with a decent radio set can modulate RF energy pretty easily, though it takes some sophistication to shape it to something useable in a modern way. The key is it's still all energy.

      Since we're still a long way from fully understanding the relation between matter and energy, we're even further away from understanding the basics of matter replication. Meaning unless you're talking a radio-guided shell, I don't see how we can have software-defined weaponry anytime soon.

  8. Stevie

    Bah!

    So "software defined radar" still requires the expensive radar setup then?

    What we are really saying is that if you have a radar set you can use it for all sorts of things, and like everything else on the planet in the last ten years, doing so involves computers.

    Hmm.

    Well, Duh.

    1. danolds

      Re: Bah!

      The 'big deal' part of this is that we have computers that are fast enough to output the various waves, modulate them correctly, etc., then received the input, sort it, interpret it, and route it to the right place. All of this on the fly and at the same time - with a computer that's small enough to fit in a small compartment on a plane. That's pretty cool, isn't it?

    2. dustin_franklin

      Re: Bah!

      Yes, it still requires the radar frontend (amplifier, AESA antenna, ADC/DACs ect). However instead of having the majority of your signal processing (DDC, beamforming, pulse compression, STAP, SAR, ect) implemented in firmware, it's cheaper & more flexible to run on GPU(s) in CUDA or OpenCL. Not only can it slash development costs (which can run into the hundreds of millions for radars & SIGINT systems like on the F22/F35) but GPUs can also host a variety of DSP pipelines at runtime without a need to reconfigure the system (Infiniband/RoCE switched fabrics also help with this). And now that Tegra supports CUDA with NVIDIA's release of the K1, it's scalable for the largest & smallest radars alike.

  9. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    Meh

    Very flexible

    If you can take the hit due to the higher power and cooling requirements over special function chips and processors or you have the hardware simulate one system at a time (or settle for reduced capability across all the systems you're simulating EG in track-while-scan mode the full spec is 24 targets, but in TWS with SAR it's 12 (and the SAR resolution is not full strength either.

    But as others have pointed out there is a reason why most systems are still built round specific band or protocol hardware.

    BTW heat transfer in quite a few military systems is done by heat pipes which IIRC in Eurofighter were tested to about 10g and still functioned.

    1. danolds

      Re: Very flexible

      That's a good point about potentially higher power requirements for general purpose gear vs. special function chips. If anyone is interested, I could talk to Dustin and see how GPUs compare to FPGAs and other custom chips in terms of performance, power, heat, etc. Might make a good webcast.

      I think that the environmentals can probably be engineered around, particularly since the general purpose stuff is so much less expensive, it would free up budget for the re-engineering. But one problem I haven't considered is security. Does using general purpose gear make the device more vulnerable to hacking by an enemy? I would imagine it would, so what steps are taken to keep it secure?

      1. annodomini2

        Re: Very flexible

        Not really, the military gear still has much higher integrity standards to meet, radiation hardening, EMC, vibration, thermal etc.

        It won't be the Off-the-shelf silicon you find in a commercial device.

  10. MondoMan
    Linux

    The TRUE reason they need to run at 100% duty cycle:

    Otherwise, they'll quickly fail once the Chinese hackers start running their Bitcoin miners.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: The TRUE reason they need to run at 100% duty cycle:

      Next people will be telling me they can hack my TV, which has absolutely nothing going into it except an F cable and a mains plug...

  11. KBeee
    Joke

    Ah, radar.. I remember that.. In the Good Old Days you could do stuff with it.. Watch Ruskies spying on you or trying to Bomb You Back To The Stone Age via their (37) Super Bombers.. or see where a commercial airliner crashed.. Oh! Wait!

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