Electronic Warfare (EW) platforms face an increasingly difficult task in terms of RF channel density and signal evasiveness. Curtiss-Wright and Silver Palm Technologies have collaborated to develop an open architecture RF signal processing system to address this challenge.

The Curtiss-Wright EW multi-channel tuner system is a ruggedized compact 3U VPX system that combines state-of-the-art multichannel receivers, Intel Xeon D multi-core DSPs, and AMD Kintex-7 FPGAs. The Silver Palm SP-8344 card provides four high performance configurable tuner channels. The Intel Xeon D octal-core (12-core optional) CHAMP-XD1 DSP processor card provides the EW signal processing and system control. Signal processing in the system is augmented by the XF07-523 XMC that provides a user programmable AMD Kintex-7 FPGA with direct interconnect to the SP-8344 tuner. The EW tuner system supports CentOS 7.2 (contact the factory for other OS options).

The EW system is a rugged compact solution to today’s RF challenges. It provides multiple receiver channels and supports from 20 MHz to 6 GHz frequency coverage. The RF tuner provides the necessary bandwidth and dynamic range with low noise, processing, and for EW applications.