MILITARY AVIONICS TWENTY YEARS IN THE FUTURE

摘要

This paper explores the generic structure of avionics beyond the Pave Pace system architecture. Projected constraints, opportunities and trends in several pervasive system building blocks which should be mature by this time frame are discussed and an example of the form this architecture might take is offered. In developing these projections, the author interviewed several technology experts in Industry and Government to help in forecasting the future of military avionics. General conclusions are: (1) cost-driven sensor solutions will drive the avionics designs for most military avionics applications in order to meet demanding situation awareness goals, (2) the most pervasive and highest-leveraged building blocks used to build this advanced system will be commercially-available data and signal processors along with advanced A/D converters and digital and RF photonics, (3) a continued increase in time sharing and physical integration at every level of the avionics architecture is projected, including multifunction EO and RF apertures, RF support electronics and a highly integrated digital system, (4) distributed high-speed photonic switches will permeate the architecture to achieve a unified interconnect network across RF, IF, data and signal processing modules built from families of printed wiring boards, (5) advances in packaging and microelectronics will result in the need for liquid immersion cooling and 3-dimensional stacking of RF, digital and photonic circuitry to support integrated apertures, digital receivers and data and signal processors to accomodate the needed speed and functional integration, (6) the digital boundary will move closer to the apertures to enable IF digital receivers for electronic warfare and radar applications (digital receivers up through L-band will have occurred during the Pave Pace era) and will extend the use of photonics beyond the digital arena to where photonically-controlled beam steering for phased arrays, RF signal distribution and hetereodyning will be possible.