Spectrum Signal Processing Contracted To Support Navy's Advanced Deployable System Program

Columbia, MD - Spectrum Signal Processing (USA) Inc., a subsidiary of Spectrum Signal Processing Inc., announced that the Government Communications Systems Division of Harris Corporation has awarded Spectrum a $1.5 million contract for equipment and services to be deployed in the field trials of the U.S. Navy's Advanced Deployable System (ADS). Spectrum will supply signal processing products and services for use in both ship borne and buoy components of the ADS. Field trials are scheduled to begin in late 2007.

The U.S. Navy's ADS is a rapidly deployable submarine surveillance system designed for the world's littorals, or coastal areas. The system will provide continuous acoustic coverage over vast ocean areas over extended periods and will be capable of detecting quiet nuclear submarines, diesel-electric submarines on the battery, ships exiting or entering port and mine-laying operations. The system will consist of a series of passive, bottom-fixed, battery-powered hydrophones connected to an anchored buoy and linked to a processing station aboard the Navy's new Littoral Combat Ship (LCS). Spectrum's products will be deployed in both ship borne and buoy borne radio equipment.

The ship borne radio platform will use Spectrum's HCDR-1000 (High Channel Density Receiver) VME-based platform and will be responsible for interacting with multiple communications buoys and passing field data back to a central data processing station. Following successful field trials, the ship borne platforms are planned for deployment on approximately 80 U.S. Navy vessels.

The buoy radio platform will use Spectrum's SDR-4000 platform, part of the company's newly introduced rugged 3U CompactPCI(R) software defined radio product line. The buoy will transmit sonar data obtained from cabled hydrophones on the ocean floor to the ship borne platform. Following successful field trials, multiple buoy systems are planned for field deployment.

"Spectrum's modular, re-usable and reconfigurable architecture allows Harris to reduce development costs by applying similar technologies to very diverse components of the Advanced Deployable System program," said Ken Schumacher, Senior Program Manager, Harris Corporation Government Communications Systems Division. "Spectrum's low power, rugged, small form factor products provide the right processing solution needed for this unique surveillance application."

"Our commercial off-the-shelf platforms provide defense primes and their subcontractors with proven technology upon which they can immediately commence prototyping and field trials," said Michael P. Farley, President of Spectrum USA. "With this contract, Spectrum has established a promising relationship with a leading supplier of military communications equipment to the U.S. Department of Defense."

Spectrum's HCDR-1000 and SDR-4000 are heterogeneous processing platforms that incorporate field programmable gate arrays from Xilinx and PowerPC processors from Freescale and IBM. RapidIO provides a high bandwidth interconnect fabric between the processors, as well as the input/output functionality to the processors, to ensure efficient use of the processing resources. Software development tools include Spectrum's quicComm hardware abstraction layer to facilitate algorithm partitioning and programming, and a real-time operating system.

SOURCE: Spectrum Signal Processing Inc.