Annapolis High-Density 3U VPX Switches and Chassis Target Radar, Electronic Warfare Applications

ANNAPOLIS, Maryland. Targeting radar, electronic warfare, jamming, and ISR (intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance) applications, engineers at Annapolis Micro Systems developed an HD Switch and Chassis that are in final design verification, with customer shipping scheduled for this month. They are the industry’s first commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) products to integrate high density VITA 91 connectors that double the available backplane density.

The HD Switch, dubbed the WILDSTAR 3U OpenVPX Switch (WP3E20), offers as much as 128 different pairs of Ethernet. The WILD100 13-Slot 3U OpenVPX Chassis (WC31DH) offers as many as 64 lanes of Ethernet or PCIe, or 128 LVDS pairs.

Switch

The rugged WP3E20 Switch is the next-gen version of Annapolis’ best-selling SOSA™aligned WP3E10 Switch. Both provide switching between backplane slots of multiple channels of 100Gb Ethernet, front panel I/O, and separate data and control plane switches and two Zynq UltraScale+ processors that support encrypted secure communication.

The WP3E20 also has HD connectors, which deliver dramatic increases in bandwidth and reductions in latency. It features as many as fourteen 40/100Gb and twenty-four 1/10/25Gb or six 40/100Gb Ethernet ports.

Two additional HD switches are coming soon:

WILDSTAR 3P20 3U VPX PCIe/LVDS Switch – Up to 128 LVDS or eight 8x PCIe interfaces
WILDSTAR 3H20 3U VPX Combo Switch – Combines 40/100GbE, Gen4 PCIe, and/or LVDS

WC31DH 19” Rackmount Chassis

The front-loading forced-air, conduction-cooled WC31DH Chassis has 13 3U OpenVPX slots. It includes:

Eight Primary RF/Compute Intensive Payload Slots with 14.6.11 profile
Two HD Switch profiles
One Timing Slot with 14.9.2 profile
Two 12V-only VITA 62 Power Supply Slots

The two HD switch slots enable the WC31DH Chassis to handle all Data and Control Plane Ethernet via one slot, with the second switch slot dedicated to the expansion plane – Ethernet, PCIe and/or LVDS. This enables deployment for low latency jamming or radar applications.

“The new VITA 91 high-density connector allows for a completely switched backplane, so the expansion plane is no longer defined by a fixed backplane PCB, but is now fully reconfigurable,” says Jay Grandin, Annapolis Micro Systems VP of Product Development.

“This not only allows for all the slots to be on the same non-blocking Ethernet switch instead of two switches chained together, but it facilitates a flexible, programmable expansion plane. The expansion plane supports either 8x Gen4 PCIe, 4x Gen4 PCIe plus eight LVDS, or 16 LVDS to each payload slot using the WP3P20 Switch which is software-configurable on a per slot basis. With the double-density WP3E20 100GbE switch, two existing standard VPX switch slots can be combined into a single high-density switch slot, freeing up a slot for the WP3P20 Expansion Plane Switch.”

The chassis includes a secure WILD Chassis Manager (WABGM2). It is SOSA-aligned and VITA 46.11 compliant, and is powered by a Xilinx UltraScale+ ZU11EG MPSoC and Microsemi PolarFire MPF200T FPGA for security functions. Multiple security and advanced features are available; contact factory for details.

WILD100 EcoSystem

The new switches and chassis join the Annapolis WILD100 EcoSystem of products, most of which were developed in alignment with the Sensor Open Systems Architecture (SOSA) Technical Standard and support C5ISR/EW Modular Open Suite of Standards (CMOSS). The EcoSystem is an interoperable portfolio of rugged high-performance OpenVPX COTS boards and systems that are used for challenging data acquisition, digital signal processing, and data storage applications.

The WILD100 EcoSystem includes these 3U VPX products:

3U Baseboard: Eleven WILDSTAR Baseboards
3U Storage: WILDSTAR 3SN0 Storage
3U Switch: Four WILDSTAR Switches
3U Chassis: Four WILD100 Chassis & Backplanes
3U Kit: WILD100 SOSA Development Kit

The WILD100 EcoSystem also includes these 6U VPX products:

6U Baseboard: Four WILDSTAR Baseboards
6U Storage: WILDSTAR 6SN0 Storage
6U Switch: WILDSTAR 6E10 Switch
6U Chassis: WILD100 16-Slot Chassis & Backplane

Annapolis’ powerful BSP options include 40/100GbE IP and both VxWorks 7 and Linux support.

Annapolis high-performance products are designed for advanced HPC, ISR, and multi-function EW applications, including phased array radar, cybersecurity network processing, DRFM, beamforming, sensor processing, wireless communication, and radar signal processing.