Software Chosen For U.S. Military Systems Upgrade

Santa Clara - Real-Time Innovations, Inc. announced that Dot21 Real-Time Systems has adopted RTI's Network Data Distribution Service (NDDS) middleware as a key technology in Dot21's efforts to help the U.S. military upgrade its aging radar and processing systems. The use of NDDS allowed Dot21 to make its radar display application compliant with the Open Architecture Computing Environment (OACE) specifications for military systems.

RTI's open-architecture platform, NDDS, is based on the Object Management Group's (OMG's) Data Distribution Service (DDS) standard. NDDS offers a rich set of publish-subscribe middleware that is a compelling solution for integrating diverse systems. Under the OMG DDS standard, developers specify various Quality of Service (QoS) parameters such as reliability versus best-effort delivery, expected rates of publication and the length of time data is valid throughout the network.

Dot21 uses NDDS to reduce the cost and risk of managing technology obsolescence and to attain interoperability for military systems. "One of the key enabling technologies is middleware," commented Mark Bailey, business development manager at Dot21 Real-Time Systems. "We chose NDDS because RTI is the leader in the DDS space with the U.S. Navy. NDDS gives us a path to provide Northrop Grumman Mission Systems and the Naval Surface Weapons Center in Port Hueneme a radar display that will support mission requirements for years to come." Level 3 compliance refers to use of mainstream commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware combined with standards-based middleware and operating systems.

Standards-based interfaces are a key element of the U.S. Navy's long-term planning. "Using open architectures will allow the Navy to afford its future," noted William Johnson, director of Open Architecture, program executive office for Integrated Warfare Systems (PEO-IWS7). "New technology is available every 18 months. Using standards-based interfaces such as DDS allows us to easily introduce upgraded hardware in our operational systems without having to rewrite the application software."

This example of Dot21's use of NDDS involves the U.S. Navy's SPS48 radar system. "We took an existing display based on proprietary Message-Oriented Middleware (MOM) and replaced the interface with NDDS. That will allow our display application to interoperate with other new systems that are DDS-compliant without the cost of maintaining proprietary software," said Bailey. "NDDS will also allow us to create remote interfaces that talk to legacy systems on one side and future mission systems that use DDS on the other side."

"The publish-subscribe paradigm of NDDS enables systems to share data without having to create unique interfaces for each system," notes Gerardo Pardo-Castellote, RTI's chief technology officer. "It frees the developer from needing to know the internal operation of one system in order to retrieve its data. All the application needs to do is to subscribe to the desired data sets and NDDS does the rest. RTI is the leader in DDS technology. NDDS enables our customers to create systems that are OACE Level 3 compliant, and we are committed to providing a product that is compliant with the DDS standard's minimum profile. "Compliance with the DDS standard's minimum profile will be required for Level 3 OACE compliance in 2006.

RTI and Dot21 are currently engaged in discussions to further their collaboration on standards-based system development. These discussions include cooperation on tools for capturing and analyzing data from NDDS systems that will be based on Dot21's technology.

SOURCE: Real-Time Innovations