Advanced, Low Cost, Integrated Avionics

An avionics architecture that eliminates false targets, null signals, and noise at the ROIC is proposed. Smart ROICs mask data from being read-out which is critical for larger and multi-color FPAs that flood the processing pipeline with data of no interest. The proposed approach tasks the four MIPS CPUs with feature extraction computations for discrimination. The approach leverages algorithms developed for medicine and military programs and utilizes the THAAD computer's flexible FPGAs. The technology dramatically lowers false alarm rates and lower cost while buying back bandwidth and processing time for aimpoint selection improvements. Phase I experiments with HWIL data will identify the processing steps for the ROIC as separate from those in the FPGAs. LMSSC collaboration offers internal research and development resources, direct THAAD system comparisons and an implementation path. In Phase II, an FPA manufacturer will help implement the ROIC advancement and the collaboration with LMSSC will continue to address the on-board data feature extraction, an expert system to support fusion for THAAD. Polaris Sensor Technologies is collaborating with commercial FPA manufacturers to port this technology into commercial systems. In Phase II a truly smart focal plane array will be developed, pushing the processing into the sensing plane.