Configurable Communication Bridge between Legacy Systems and Open Systems

Systems & Processes Engineering Corporation (SPEC) proposes to develop a reprogrammable network bridge which provides direct communication between existing legacy system networks (MIL-STD-1553, NTDS, PDC) and open standard networks. Legacy data buses lag in performance and versatility when compared to modern bus standards currently in use. For example, the fiber distributed data interface (FDDI) is a 100 Mbit/s local area network, whereas MIL-STD-1553 is a 1 Mbit/s data bus. The configurable bridge will provide a low cost, efficient technology for connecting new military systems with existing military systems through an open systems interface. This transparent connection between old and new military systems, will allow for incremental upgrading of military systems with the latest high performance buses, while retaining desirable interconnects with installed legacy systems. SPEC proposes a bridge architecture which uses field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), off-the-shelf bus interface chip sets, and non-volatile memory for storing the translator protocol bit stream. The FPGA-based bridge architecture provides bridge reconfigurability, since configuration bit streams define the associated translation protocols for the data buses connected through the bridge. The communications bridge between two different networks is ready when the FPGA completes loading the bit stream of the protocol translator.