Edgewater Successfully Completes E1553 Flight Demonstration
Share:
Company achieves key milestone in deployment of data bus technology
Ottawa, ON - February 1, 2007 - Edgewater Computer Systems Inc., provider of advanced computer and communications technology products for enterprise and embedded computing applications, announced today that it has successfully demonstrated its Extended 1553, or E1553, data bus technology in a joint industry flight demonstration. Also known as Mil-Std 1553B Notice 5, the technology has previously been demonstrated in a number of developmental and simulation environments including the C-130, F-16 and F-18.
In December, Edgewater's E1553 technology was tested on a U.S. Navy A-3 jet aircraft operated by Raytheon at Raytheon's Flight Test Operations Center in Van Nuys, California. For the purposes of the test, E1553 was coupled onto the internal 1553 Navigation Bus of the A-3, which also hosted other legacy 1553 Line Replaceable Units (LRUs) communicating concurrently on the same bus. Raytheon verified that no bus errors were reported on the legacy 1553 equipment during the flight.
"Raytheon and Edgewater have made a significant statement to NAVAL Aviation by demonstrating this capability in such a rapid plug-and-play manner. This milestone provides confidence to government and industry, and further supports the government led activity known as Naval Aviation's 1553N5-TWG (Transition Working Group), which is bringing together industry to collaborate, share experiences, reduce risk and accelerate deployment of this enabling technology" said Mr. Gerard Walles, Director, Open Architecture AIR-4.5 and F/A 18 S&T Group Leader, PMA-265, NAVAIR. "Adding high capacity networking across the existing 1553 bus without changing the legacy software or disrupting the legacy communications has tremendous implications vis-A-vis an open-architecture approach for cost-effective, robust networking and promotes key interfaces that enable substantial increases in capability with minimal impact to the warfighter."
The rate monitor maintained a consistent connection of greater than 100Mbps through the entire flight. In order to utilize the available capacity of the E1553 network, Edgewater ran live streaming video along with bi-directional, bulk-data transfers in order to maximize the network capacity of the bus while maintaining a 10E-12 bit error ratio (BER). The current generation of E1553 technology, which is limited to approximately 100Mbps due to FPGA performance restrictions, performed as expected. Edgewater's ASIC based solution, due to be released this year, will be capable of supporting substantially higher throughput.
"This technology delivers a cost-effective approach to incremental aircraft network upgrades while eliminating the proliferation of multiple disconnected networking interfaces," said Duane Anderson, President of Edgewater. "Furthermore, changes to existing operational flight programs are minimized, substantially reducing costly software development and verification cycles associated with the addition of new networks within the platform."
In March 2006, the U.S. Air Force sponsored the revision to Mil-Std 1553B referred to as Notice 5, which is based, in large part, on Edgewater's development of E1553. Mil-Std 1553B Notice 5 increases the data throughput on the 1553 bus by upwards of 200 times over legacy 1553B without the need for rewiring or changing the existing infrastructure of the platform.
About Edgewater
Edgewater Computer Systems Inc. is a privately-held provider of advanced computer and communications technology products for enterprise and embedded computing applications. Founded in 1988, Edgewater has an extensive background developing real-time high-performance multiprocessor systems for military, government, and commercial organizations. The company currently has two distinct product lines: multi-channel wireless communications and wired data communications. For more information, please visit www.edgewater.ca.
Edgewater Media and analysts contact:
Danny Sullivan
inmedia Public Relations Inc.
Tel (UK): +44 (0) 141 404 6478
Tel (US): +1 613 686 5657
Email: dsullivan@inmedia.com
or
Linda Woods
inmedia Public Relations Inc.
Tel: +1 613 234 7227 x224
Email: lwoods@inmedia.com
