New XMC Card Eases Ability of System Designers to Enhance Situational Awareness with Portable Computing
OTTAWA, CANADA – October 6, 2009 — Curtiss-Wright Controls Embedded Computing, a leading designer and manufacturer of rugged deployed commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) VME, VPX and CompactPCI products for the aerospace and defense market, has introduced the XMC-660, multi-function mezzanine card that combines wireless, GPS and cryptography to deliver portable, secure in-the-field wireless connectivity. The light-weight, small form-factor XMC-660 is an ideal solution for quickly and easily adding high-performance trusted wireless communications to VME, VPX and CompactPCI embedded systems for applications including luggable computers, manpacks, and secure laptop computers.
“Today’s netcentric battlefield demands enhanced situational awareness using secure wireless communications,” said Lynn Patterson, vice president and general manager, Modular Solutions, Curtiss-Wright Controls Embedded Computing. “The highly integrated XMC-660 enables system designers to connect portable PCs and wearable systems to access points within ground vehicles, base camps or to other nodes, forming ad-hoc wireless networks that provide the underlying infrastructure to transmit voice, video and data between authenticated users. ”
Designed for rugged environments, the XMC-660, based on the VITA 42 XMC standard, uniquely combines support for WiFi™ 802.11 n/a/b/g communications, Zigbee™ 802.15 asset tracking, and GPS location services on a single plug-in mezzanine card, to deliver an ideal solution for systems integrators building embedded wireless networks. Power dissipation for the card is 7 Watts (typical)/ 8.4 Watts (max). It requires only a 5V power supply from the basecard. All other necessary voltages are generated on-board the XMC-660.
Secure Wireline Interface for Embeddable Rugged Computers
Although targeted for multi-function wireless applications, the XMC-660 also provides advanced back-end AES/3DES cryptographic support for secure wireline communications over PCI/PCIe to a basecard. As a modular building block, the XMC-660 can, for example be mounted on a Curtiss-Wright Controls’ VPX3-1100 ATOMIC basecard (uses Intel ATOM® 1.6GHz processor) resulting in a 100mm x 160mm x 2.54 mm lightweight solution embeddable in a manpack or a ground vehicle as a wireless computing end node.
Wireless LAN – 802.11 n/a/b/g
To deliver high performance WiFi support, the XMC-660 features a dual band MIMO 2T3R chipset with PCI interface. The chipset consists of two highly integrated RF and baseband/MAC IC modules that are fully compliant with the IEEE 802.11n draft specification, as well as IEEE 802.11 a/b/g standards that operate in the 2.5GHz and 5GHz bands.
WiFi features include:
· Optimized Base-band and RF architecture
· Wireless connectivity at high through-puts and extended range.
· Reverse direction data-flow and Frame Aggression
· Wireless Security enabled with WEP 64/128, WPA,WPA2 support
· QoS-WMM,WMM-PS
· Wake on WLAN feature
· PCI interface with 3.3V/5V PCI I/O
GPS Module – SiRF Star-III
The XMC-660’s GPS module is a small high sensitivity solution comprising a 20 channel GPS receiver (SiRF Star- III) capable of providing accurate location, altitude, velocity and direction data of moving objects. The module receives spectrum signals from MEO (medium Earth Orbiting) satellites. A low noise RF amplifier is used on the module to achieve the sensitivity below -159dBm and to withstand ESD up to 2000V.
Wireless Zigbee – 802.15.4
The Zigbee interface on the XMC-660 is provided by a single chip TI CC2480 processor running Texas Instruments’ Zigbee Z-Stack. The application running on the base card can make use of this ZigBee stack through APIs provided on the basecard driver. The XMC-660 hardware interface for ZigBee includes UART for data communication and GPIO lines for configuration and control.
Software Support
Software support for the XMC-660 includes drivers for the Windows XP, Linux GPPLE, and VxWorks 6.7 (roadmap) operating environments.
The XMC-660 is the newest addition to Curtiss-Wright Control’s broad family of rugged network embedded boards designed to enable netcentric computing for the war fighter. It joins other leading edge products such as the VPX3-1100 ATOMIC, VPX6-684 FireBlade, SVME/DMV-682, the 6U VME 680, the 3U CompactPCI 681 and the SwitchBox I and SwitchBox II fully integrated switch/router subsystem. It also complements Curtiss-Wright’s wide range of Single Board Computers, Digital Signal Processors, Graphics and Communications and IO products. For more information about Curtiss-Wright Controls networking solutions please visit www.cwcembedded.com.
For editorial information regarding Curtiss-Wright Controls Embedded Computing Multi Computing products or services, contact John Wranovics, Director of Media Relations, Curtiss-Wright Controls Embedded Computing, Tel: (925) 640-6402; email: jwranovics@curtisswright.com. Web site: www.cwcembedded.com.
Sales Inquiries: Please forward all Sales and reader service inquiries to Jerri-Lynne Charbonneau, Curtiss-Wright Controls Embedded Computing, Tel: (613) 254-5112; Fax: (613) 599-7777; e-mail: sales@cwcembedded.com.
Pricing for the XMC-660 starts at $4,600 in single quantities. Targeted availability is scheduled to begin in Q4 2009.
About Curtiss-Wright Controls Embedded Computing
Curtiss-Wright Controls Embedded Computing is the industry’s most comprehensive and experienced single source for embedded solutions, ranging from Processing, Subsystems, Data Communication, DSP, and Video & Graphics to the most advanced board level components and fully integrated custom systems. The Embedded Computing group serves the defense, aerospace, commercial and industrial markets and is part of Curtiss-Wright Controls Inc. For more information about Curtiss-Wright Controls Embedded Computing, visit www.cwcembedded.com.
About Curtiss-Wright Controls, Inc.
Headquartered in Charlotte, N.C., Curtiss-Wright Controls is the motion control segment of Curtiss-Wright Corporation (NYSE: CW). With manufacturing facilities around the world, Curtiss-Wright Controls is a leading technology-based organization providing niche motion control products, subsystems and services internationally for the aerospace and defense markets. For more information, visit www.cwcontrols.com.
