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>> Click here to review our Graphics & Video Product Table Today’s high performance display systems rapidly and effectively depict tactical situations, sensor data and decision criteria for the operators and commanders of military platforms of all types, from combat aircraft, to submarines, tanks, airborne command posts and many more. Fusing data from many systems, often across a co-operative group of different platforms, is a capability that requires extensive real-time data processing and very sophisticated graphical technology to display video from multiple sensors overlaid onto, or mixed with, a composite tactical picture. Curtiss-Wright Controls Embedded Computing has amassed many years of experience offering graphics and video distribution solutions for many types of platform based on our broad range of off-the-shelf product lines.
End-to-end Capability With the introduction of the digital battlefield, video distribution and display technologies have become the keys to wide-ranging tactical and strategic situational awareness. Commanders of today’s forces build this awareness from multiple sources of digital voice, data and video gathered from many different sources from individual soldiers in the field, to multi-sensor UAVs, to complete air, ground or naval battle groups. No other company offers such complete off-the-shelf video and graphics solutions from sensor to displays for all these platform types and environmental conditions:
These solutions are all deployable in a wide range of environmental conditions to fit specific customer application areas. As with other Curtiss-Wright products, graphics and video solutions are designed for operation in the most severe environments. Many of them are available with conductioncooling where size and power-density are at a premium, while others have been optimized to provide the most costeffective solutions in the relatively benign environments found in naval combat systems or wide-body, pressurized airborne surveillance platforms. Compression and Distribution With the advent of platform-wide, distributed computing based on high performance networks such as Fibre Channel or Gigabit Ethernet, we have developed products to distribute compressed high fidelity TV video streams through a network. JPEG2000 is ideal for TV video where its high compression ratios and complete frame-by-frame compression allow many video channels to share a network without loss of picture quality. Each compressed video channel can be multicast to many display positions without any additional cabling or signal buffering. The encapsulation of video into Ethernet packets also allows it to be distributed from platform to platform via secure radio or satellite links.
Video Capture and Signal Processing In many applications the incoming sensor video must be captured, then processed in real-time prior to display. Analog or digital TV signals can be captured frame by frame and passed over a PCI bus at live frame rates to either a Single Board Computer (SBC) or dedicated multi-processor signal processing computer for further processing. Not all sensor video is in TV format and in these cases Curtiss-Wright offers Serial FPDP or FPGA-based interfaces that convert the incoming video into data streams onto a PCI bus for this additional processing. Video and Graphical Display Representing information and video from many different sources onto a single display requires sophisticated frame store technology that has been honed and refined by Curtiss-Wright through many real-world customer applications. Multi-layer frame store technology is the key to reaching the performance required by these advanced graphical display requirements. Components of the picture to be displayed are captured in layers in the frame store and then mixed or overlaid to create the final video stream to the display head itself. Using multiple layers ensures much cleaner transitions from frame to frame and window to window than using a single layer. It also provides much better real-time response for the operator as the entire displayed picture does not need to be redrawn when only certain features change. Frame store layers have many possible uses; they can be used for incoming video such as radar, TV and IR sensors. Other layers may be used for map data, for graphical overlays such as symbols or vectors or they may be used for multiple status and communications windows. Layers must be synchronized for display and incoming video streams can even be scaled to fit in variable size windows on the display. We incorporate the very latest graphical display processor devices into every new product to provide exceptional levels of graphical performance. By supporting the industry standard, OpenGL Graphical User Interface (GUI) across our graphics and video products, a high degree of portability is assured when migrating from one generation of product to the next. All our products offer high refresh rates and >> Click here to learn more about Cobra, our Video Windowing System Recording While many platforms such as combat aircraft, UAVs, helicopters and ground-based surveillance vehicles are becoming capable of down-linking streaming video, this only represents part of the data that needs to be gathered for complete post-mission analysis. Curtiss-Wright offers packaged recorders featuring either solid-state or hard drive technologies for capturing mission video from sensors, distribution networks or graphical displays. Deployed systems such as battle tanks, surveillance aircraft and naval vessels, are used extensively for training and simulation exercises. These require complex scenarios to be re-run using simulated sensor inputs with actual operator screen content to be reviewed in real-time. Curtiss-Wright offers video recorders to capture and replay these high resolution displays at full frame rates. Using advanced compression/decompression, high resolution video can be streamed over Ethernet to remote locations or stored locally on large capacity disks. Additionally, we offer high capacity, solid-state memory recorders to provide Snapshot recordings of events in armored vehicles, UAVs and tactical aircraft. These are ideal for recording detailed raw sensor data from many sources as well as operator reactions during, for example, gunfire or target engagement, for later analysis and tactical training. Curtiss-Wright has the complete range of recording solutions based on the VMEbus, PMC/XMC and PCI standards to meet the challenge of each project’s unique set of requirements. These can be combined to satisfy different types of sensor input, switching, scaling and distribution requirements, display formats, performance and screen resolutions to find the optimum solution for even the most demanding command and control or combat system application. Whatever your video and graphics requirements, Curtiss-Wright remains committed to offer the most complete solution. We have the industry’s broadest range of off-the-shelf board level products plus the expertise to develop semi-custom derivatives of standard products, fully custom solutions or complete packaged solutions. |
Graphics & Video Design Overview
High performance graphics
screen resolutions, some of them supporting up to 2K x 2K resolution for highly detailed Command and Control situational displays.