Today’s Gigabit Ethernet Modules: Realizing the Netcentric Vision

Sunday, February 01 2009

To realize the Depart ment of Defense’s (DoD) vision of a ubiquitous, netcentric battlefield — connecting the warfighter with critical data in real time — embedded commercial offthe- shelf (COTS) vendors have begun to deliver innovative, open-standards-based, rugged, high-speed switches and router modules.

The principles that define the netcentric model are: 1) increase the reach of the network, 2) increase the network’s richness (i.e., support bandwidth-dependent services such as video), and 3) deliver that rich data right now (i.e., in real time). The goal of these principles is to significantly improve, re - duce, and speed the “Sensorto- Shooter” decision-making chain through the use of advanced fabric connectivity, such as Gigabit Ethernet (GbE). By bringing advanced IP network interfaces to compact, rugged COTS modules, embedded vendors are helping to extend the network to every battlefield platform, from air and sea to land vehicle, and to individual soldiers. The use of these highly rugged, highspeed interconnects is enabling netcentric operations to propagate where they could not reach before, with a greater richness of data, all in near real time.

Today’s embedded modules provide both a network switch and a network node, and enable the rapid deployment of rugged, intra-vehicle Intra-Platform Net - works (IPNs) using COTS products with full support of IPv4 and IPv6, in line with the DoD’s vision of a Network Centric Battlefield. Furthermore, these modules are among the first rugged embedded network modules designed to use the new VITA 46/48 standards. They effectively redefine the “deeply embedded” rugged network infrastructure of the battlefield.

Performance Considerations

Previously, the greatest impediment to bringing the network to the edge of the battlefield was the performance limits of slower legacy data buses (CANbus or MIL-STD-1553 interconnects), or, in some limited cases, 10/100 Ethernet links on existing platforms. These relatively slow interconnects create a bottleneck slowing delivery of the critical battlefield information needed for situational awareness. Additionally, these different interconnect technologies did not provide the common standardized methods of data transport needed for interoperability between battlefield systems and applications.

By bringing GbE interconnectivity to rugged line-replaceable modules (LRMs), it is possible to effectively reduce rich data transfer times from minutes to sub-seconds within internal switching context times as low as a few microseconds, and drastically reduce response time. This brings the battlefield network closer to the ultimate goal of real-time delivery of much richer data (video, signal processing, enemy tracking) for actionable intelligence. By bringing GbE to the inter-vehicle network, these network modules provide significant performance improvement over legacy data communications architectures. Even better, these modules are being designed to support the next-generation 10 Gigabit Ethernet, which can deliver a 100x increase in bandwidth and intra-vehicle data communications capacity.