Military and Homeland Electronic Circuit Design

TechEn’s staff has developed the electronic circuit design of products for homeland security and military uses. These programs include sonar beamforming, target tracking, augmented cognition, motor control and GPS signal simulation.

GPS:

TechEn has developed a GPS signal simulator that will be used in the development and testing of GPS products, systems and solutions. The program required electronic circuit design for very high speed analog and digital circuitry. The firmware used both BGA and Xilinx processors. The firmware was written in HDVL, C and Assembly. The GPS simulator interfaces with a PC computer.

Circular Array Sonar Beamformer:

TechEn developed a high-speed digital beamformer for a 10 KHz sonar system. This system utilizes 34 DSP processors running in parallel to form 80 synthetic aperture sonar beams in real-time. TechEn designed and developed three VME board designs, all beamforming firmware, and a 68020 host control program and beamformer (BIST) test suite. This system is presently in service in multiple installations with the Swedish Navy.

Side-scan Survey & Mine Detection Beamformer System:

Beamformer hardware and software

TechEn provided design and development engineering of a high resolution, high frequency (>0.3MHz) digital beamformer system for underwater survey and mine-detection purposes. The system design was developed and verified using a detailed MATLAB model. This system utilizes multiple DSPs operating in parallel to create multiple synthetic aperture beams from two 80 element linear transducer arrays. The system beamformer focuses to achieve constant 12.5 cm bottom cell beamwidth and accommodates steering to compensate for towfish motion and bottom height compensation.

TechEn developed Beamformer hardware and software for the 30 KHz search sonar shown above. In this system the beamformer uses 34 Analog Devices ADSP21xx processors to form a 360 degree beam set at 6 KHz rates. As well, TechEn’s staff has developed and provided embedded DSP processor algorithms for acoustic room equalization and medical technology.

DARPA / NU Digital Camera:

TechEn assisted in the electronic circuit design and development of a digital control and signal processing subsystem for a novel digital imager system. The imaging devices are being developed at Northeastern University. The TechEn developed Control Unit provides analog biasing, digital image capture, image storage and pre processing. Interfaces are provided for serial diagnostic, PC Host Parallel port and ultra-high-speed parallel (external DSP sub-processor). In addition, TechEn is providing packaging that includes local user LCD interface and control as well as remote (battery) operation. On-board technology includes high-speed RISC control processing and programmable logic devices.