Instrumentation and Control News

Toronto, ON – February 3, 2004 Array Systems Computing Inc. (Array) is pleased to announce that it has received a contract from the Bundesamt fur Wehrtechnik und Beschaffung (BWB) to provide an Underwater Acoustic Analysis System (UAAS) to the Federal German Navy’s Hydroacoustic Analysis Centre (HAM). Array provided the first system of this type, named Sonar Acoustic Post Processing System (SAPPS) to the Royal Swedish Navy (RSwN) to analyse the acoustic and electromagnetic signatures of seagoing vessels. The UAAS is designed to analyse the sonar records of the new U212A submarines as well as records collected by the U206A submarine, MUWOst (Navy Underwater Detection Centre), Maritime Patrol Aircraft and fleet vessels. The system can be expanded to include the records from F123 and F124 frigates. The UAAS system architecture provides a truly remarkable degree of flexibility and adaptability. At the heart of the system is Array’s Scalable Generic Signal Processor (GSP). The Scalable GSP is an open architecture cluster of parallel general-purpose processors using Linux, an open source operating system. The term “Scalable” describes the ability of the control software to recognize and utilize the available processors, whether this is one, ten, or even hundreds. The effective data processing rate may be increased with the addition of processors, without a need to re-write or recompile the software. Conversely, single processor failure simply reduces processing speed. Users can add their own software modules to meet specific needs such as the introduction of classified algorithms.
Array’s Scalable GSPs are suitable for other computationally intensive signal processing applications  including: synthetic aperture radar, remote sensing, and high fidelity real-time simulations. Adoption of the UAAS featuring Array’s Scalable GSP puts the German Navy in the forefront of the international movement to adopt Open System Enabling Technology. The United States, United Kingdom and Sweden have already invested in this technology.