Next Generation Architecture for Heterogeneous Embedded Systems

The Software Communications Architecture (SCA), a mandatory specification for Software Radio implementations by the Joint Tactical Radio System (JTRS), defines a Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) based component model for building portable applications in a heterogeneous environment. The Object Management Group’s (OMG) CORBA is an accepted architecture for distributed systems that recently added a component model to its suite of standards. The authors’ effort in leveraging the strength of CORBA by reusing OMG standards within the SCA, and improving OMG standards to match JTRS expectations, yields synergies that will broaden the vision of SCA as well as easing implementations and improving scalability within the SCA framework. A case study shows seamless integration of FPGA components into an SCA application. The Streaming Component Environment (SCE), a Mercury product that provides this kind of flexibility within our current high-performance embedded systems, is being extended to comply with the OMG and SCA specifications. 1 Software Communications Architecture Today’s rapid pace of technological advances make communication devices obsolete shortly after they are produced. To keep up with this pace, communications systems must be designed to maximize the transparent insertion of new technologies at virtually every phase of their lifecycles. When these new technologies are inserted, the upgraded devices should still be able to communicate with each other and with legacy systems. The term software defined radio was coined in 1990s to overcome these problems. A software defined radio is a communications device whose functionality is defined in software. Defining the radio behavior in software lets one add new functionality without hardware alterations during a technology upgrade. In order to maintain interoperability, the radio systems must be built upon a well-defined, standardized, open architecture. Defining an architecture also enhances scalability and provides plugand-play behavior for the components of a radio. The Software Communications Architecture (SCA) is an open architecture defined by the Joint Tactical Radio System (JTRS) Joint Program Office (JPO). The SCA has been published to provide a common open architecture that can be used to build a family of radios across multiple domains. The radios built upon SCA are interoperable, can use a wide range of frequencies, and enable technology insertion. The SCA also supports software reusability. The SCA defines an Operating Environment (OE) that will be used by JTRS radios. It also specifies the services and interfaces that the applications use from the environment. The interfaces are defined by using the Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) Interface Definition Language (IDL) and graphical representations are made by using Unified Modeling Language (UML)