Affordable integrated sensor system

Abstract

The PAVE PACE program showed that the cost and weight of an avionics system for a new aircraft can be cut in half and its reliability tripled by incorporating the concepts of common modules, resource sharing, and reconfiguration into the sensor domain. The sensor domain includes the classical RF boundaries of Communication-Navigation-Identification (CNI), Radar, and Electronic Warfare (EW). The Integrated Sensor System (ISS) program is a concept development and validation initiative to address the RF avionics affordability. The ISS goal is to define an Open System Architecture (OSA) which provides economies of scale through wide-spread application, decreased number of unique module types, increased competition, and increased leverage of COTS-based hardware and software. Validation is achieved through a series of builds and demonstrations using the open system standards. This paper will describe the RF avionics requirements, the ISS Open System Architecture, and the demonstration system being built to validate the standards.