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Software Defined Radio (SDR) technology was created to improve
interoperability between different wireless networks, field radios,
and devices. SDR technology is comprised of both software and
hardware that can be dynamically reconfigured to enable
communication between a wide variety of changing communications
standards, protocols, and radio links. With this latest SDR
technology, you can create multi-mode, multi-band, and
multi-functional wireless devices and network equipment that can be
dynamically reconfigured, enhanced, and upgraded through software
updates and hardware reconfiguration.
The Green Hills
Platform for Software Defined Radio delivers a complete,
standards-based reference platform for developing and deploying SDR
systems ranging from the armed forces Joint Tactical Radio Systems
(JTRS) to public safety radios as well as commercial small
form-factor reconfigurable radios. |
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| Driving forces |
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In the aftermath of 9/11, the New York City police and fire
departments desperately needed to communicate with one another, but
the radios that different departments carried could not
interoperate. Ensuing reports that highlighted this issue triggered
a drive within civil government and homeland defense to upgrade
technology and eliminate this problem.
Prior to 9/11, the US
military had recognized a similar problem with legacy radio systems
used by different armed services branches and started JTRS. JTRS has
been a major force behind SDR and is responsible for the creation of
the Software Communication Architecture (SCA) Operating Environment
(OE) standard.
On the commercial side, wireless providers are
attracted to SDR technology because it enables remote upgrading and
reconfiguration of handset and base station software with new
features and patches, as well as potential interoperability across
multiple networks. SDR provides a solution for a broad range of
communications and devices used in:
- cellular base station and handsets
- commercial and military satellites
- military radios
- public safety
- wireless LAN/WAN
- aerospace
- automotive
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| SCA operating environment |
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SDR-enabled handsets and network equipment can be dynamically
programmed to reconfigure the hardware’s and software’s
characteristics by changing the executing communication waveforms.
This is achieved by implementing a set of clearly-defined standard
APIs that reside on top of a flexible hardware and software
platform.
The OE implements a basic set of core services and
standardized component interfaces for waveform execution and
portability. As defined by the SCA standard, this OE consists of:
- POSIX conformant operating system (SCA v2.2 and v2.2.2)
- TCP/IP stack
- CORBA
- SCA core framework
Green Hills Platform for Software Defined Radio delivers a
variety of complete SCA OE solutions that are compliant with the
latest POSIX and SCA standards. The Green Hills Platform for SDR
also provides integrated, host-based tools for every aspect of
development, debugging, optimization, and deployment as well as a
variety of integrated hardware platforms. With the Green Hills
Platform for SDR, developers can:
- increase productivity
- reduce the complexity of system architecture
- increase end product quality and reliability
- shorten the product time-to-market
In addition, Green Hills and its SCA OE partners are constantly
tracking the future standards and profile directions of the SCA, and
plans to continue support for new profiles and standards in the
future. |
| Broad range of support |
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Green Hills Software develops its Platform for SDR in conjunction
with the leading software and hardware providers in the SDR
industry. Our products have been integrated with the broadest range
of middleware, toolkits, and hardware reference
platforms.
Supported reference platforms
- Spectrum Signal Processing: SDR-4000 Software Defined Radio
Reconfigurable Communications Platform
- ISR Technologies: IDP100 JTRS Development Kit
- Lyrtech Signal Processing: Small Form Factor (SFF) SDR
Development Platform (SCA and non-SCA)
- SCA Technica: High Assurance Wireless Computing System
(HAWCS™)
Supported SCA Operating Environments and Development Tools
- The Communications Research Centre Canada (CRC): SCARI Core
Framework and Development Tools
- Harris: dmTK® Core Framework and Development Tools
- PrismTech: Spectra™ Operating Environment and Development
Tools
- Telelogic: SCA Model-Driven Development (MDD)
- Zeligsoft: Component Enabler (CE™) SCA Development Tools
Supported CORBA middleware
- Objective Interface Systems: ORBexpress™
- PrismTech: Spectra e*ORB
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| The INTEGRITY RTOS |
Green Hills Software's royalty-free INTEGRITY™
RTOS is the first operating system to be certified to the latest
IEEE POSIX.1-2003 specification, building on its mature SCA v2.2 and
v2.2.2 API conformance. To date, INTEGRITY has been used on more SDR
programs that depend on the SCA v2.2 interface than any other RTOS.
Architected for security, reliability and performance,
INTEGRITY provides the most robust foundation available for any SDR
platform development. INTEGRITY provides CPU time, memory, and file
system resource guarantees for critical radio applications and SDR
waveforms. Its brick wall partitioning ensures that applications and
waveforms always have the resources needed to run and can not
corrupt other applications or waveforms that are executing.
INTEGRITY’s virtual device driver support provides the added
security and reconfigurability required in SDR devices.
The
optional Partitioning Journaling File System (PJFS) extends
INTEGRITY’s quality-of-service guarantees into the file system by
enabling developers to assign portions of the file system to
specific applications and guarantee consistent, deterministic file
access for the intended application. INTEGRITY's PJFS protects
against unintended file access and corruption from external sources.
Finally, the PJFS journaling capabilities ensure complete file
system recovery and rapid boot after an unintentional system power
loss or system failure. |
| The MULTI IDE |
The INTEGRITY RTOS is tightly integrated with Green
Hills Software's MULTI™ integrated
development environment. MULTI IDE offers the most comprehensive
and powerful toolset for optimizing embedded device development and
features the industry’s best optimizing C, C++, EC++, and MISRA C
compilers. More silicon manufacturers choose MULTI to run benchmarks
certified by the Embedded Microprocessor Benchmark Consortium™
(EEMBC) than any other compiler. These manufacturers know that Green
Hills compilers deliver the best optimizations for generating the
smallest and fastest code.
MULTI also offers the most
extensive source code debugging available with support for both
run-mode and freeze-mode. MULTI debugging features include kernel
awareness for INTEGRITY, static analysis, performance profiling,
code coverage analysis, resource analysis, and event analysis. The
optional TimeMachine tool suite pairs with the Green Hills
SuperTrace probe to extend MULTI’s debugging capabilities with
functions that allow developers to run programs in reverse, and
visualize and confirm execution paths. By providing access to
program behavior that led up to a problem, TimeMachine can eliminate
trial-and-error debugging. INTEGRITY and MULTI are also integrated
with industry-leading model-driven development tools supporting UML
2.0. |
| Networking and security |
 TCP/IP security and performance are key
requirements for SDR devices. Green Hills Software’s networking
stacks provide the Platform for SDR with both high-performance
throughput and maximum security by delivering a field proven
dual-mode IPv4/IPv6 stack that is certified “IPv6 Ready” by Phase-2
of the IPv6 Ready Logo Program and has been through the rigors of
TAHI, Moonv6 and IxANVL testing, providing additional product
validation and completeness to users.
Security options
include SSL, SSH, IPSec, IKE, RADIUS and others. There is also a
full line of wireless security available including WPA and WPA2 as
well as Mobile IP node support. |
| Objective Interface Systems
ORBexpress |
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The ORBexpress product family is Objective Interface's
high-performance royalty-free implementation of CORBA technology.
Optimized for use in the real-time, embedded, and high-performance
development environment, the ORBexpress product family combines
performance with extreme reliability. From the ground up, ORBexpress
has been designed to provide developers with a small footprint ORB,
that is also fast, predictable and reliable. With ORBexpress
software developers can:
- simplify the development of distributed software applications
- build scalable, efficient and robust applications
- reduce overall development time
To date, an
overwhelming majority of JTRS programs have selected ORBexpress.
ORBexpress has also been tightly integrated with the INTEGRITY RTOS
to take advantage of many of its unique features and provide
developers with optimized, high performance transport mechanisms for
CORBA communications. In some cases, using INTEGRITY native
transport methods resulted in performance increases up to 30x*
faster than using standard socket communications.
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| The Communications Research Centre
Canada SCARI Software Suite |
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The SCARI Software Suite from The Communications Research Centre
Canada (CRC) is a high-performance software solution for SDR
waveform development and debug. Fully integrated and tested with
INTEGRITY, MULTI and ORBexpress, SCARI consists of three key
modules:
- a full-featured JTRS SCA Core Framework compliant to version
2.2
- a Component Development Library (CDL) that implements the
complex SCA requirements
- a Development Toolset that greatly simplifies the SDR
development life cycle. The toolset supports creating SCA
resources and devices, assembling waveforms and platform nodes,
and deployment and monitoring of applications.
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Harris dmTK
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The Harris dmTK toolkit provides both run-time components and
off-line support tools for the development and debugging of SCA
compliant waveforms. The run time components consist of the Domain
Manager (DMRE), its associated Knowledge Base (DMKB), a script
utility (DMST), and an Install Service for registering other run
time applications in the system.
The Domain Manager tracks
state changes and other status of resources throughout system
operation. dmTK also includes an off-line support environment for
modeling, monitor and control functions, and automation script
development.
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| PrismTech Spectra SDR Tools |
PrismTech’s Spectra SDR Tools dramatically raise
waveform and platform developer productivity by exploiting MDA and
DSL technologies to provide an advanced modeling capability designed
specifically for the SDR domain. They also auto-generate, auto-test,
and auto-document XML descriptors and infrastructure source code.
Spectra SDR Tools provide a pre-integrated, out-of-the box,
standards-based, hardware-independent SDR OE supporting application
interoperability and portability across general purpose processors,
DSP, and RTL processing elements. No other SDR software platform
offers this level of integration and optimization.
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| Zeligsoft Component Enabler |
The Zeligsoft Component Enabler (CE) is a model-driven
development tool designed to accelerate development and improve the
quality of software defined radios that conform to the JTRS SCA
standard. CE serves as the SCA backbone development tool, providing
a modeling methodology conforming to the SCA standard and
abstracting the complexity and intricacy of the SCA rules away from
designers. CE validates against the SCA rules at the architectural
level, and generates correct-by-construction artifacts. By adapting
to any project environment, and by working with other best-in-class
tools, CE ensures that domain specific and non-domain specific
software aspects are developed together, integrated early and
executed often, dramatically reducing project risk.
Zeligsoft Code Generator works with Zeligsoft CE to provide
industrial strength SCA component code generation optimized for a
variety of operating environments, development processes and coding
patterns. Code Generator supports the INTEGRITY RTOS and MULTI IDE.
Code Generator ensures consistency of coding across the project,
resulting in high quality, easy to maintain code. |
| Platform benefits |
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The Green Hills Platform for Software Defined Radio offers SDR
developers a number of key benefits:
- Dramatic reduction in time to market. By choosing a
complete solution, developers can immediately start
working on
waveform development and specific features that differentiate
their products in the market. The optional integrated modeling and
development tools further reduce time to market, by reducing
design and debugging time during product development.
- A complete set of tightly integrated tools. The tools
integrated with the platform encompass the SDR development cycle
from design to deployment as well as provide every level of
visibility right down to kernel aware source code debugging.
- Broad hardware, tools, and middleware support. The
platform has been integrated and tested on a range of hardware
reference platforms targeted at military, public safety and
commercial SDR markets and comes with optional SCA based
development tools and middleware from industry leading SDR
solution providers.
- Reliability and security. The platform has been
integrated and tested by SCA experts and deployed in multiple,
successful products. Since the platform is based on INTEGRITY, the
applications and waveforms are protected from each other and any
intentional or unintentional attacks.
- Significantly reduced production costs. A royaltyfree
solution, the Green Hills Platform for Software Defined Radio
offers the industry’s most cost-effective, comprehensive bundle of
software and reference hardware platforms for building SDR-enabled
devices.
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