Abaco Systems today announced that it had won orders that will see a range of its products included in a next generation radar system that will be deployed in the nose cone of a 4th generation fighter aircraft. The customer is presently on contract to build, test and integrate the solution for the USAF Air Combat Command late this year. Follow on contracts are expected in 2019 to support the US Navy as well as various European customers.

The total value of the order, which is expected to be for ˜120 board sets over the next three years, is in the region of $4.5 million.

The board sets comprise Abaco's SBC347D 3U VPX single board computer, VP780 FPGA Card and FMC140 FPGA Mezzanine Card.

"This order demonstrates Abaco's strength in electronic warfare and radar systems, with our ability to combine the key elements of the solution," said John Muller, Chief Growth Officer, Abaco. "We were able to work with the customer throughout the development of the system with a series of proofs-of-concept that demonstrated our ability to fulfil all aspects of the requirement. It was a very competitive bidding process, with some of the industry's highest profile embedded computing companies looking to secure the business."

The SBC347D rugged 3U VPX single board computer features the Intel® Xeon® Processor D-1500 family and offers support for versions of the processor with up to 16 cores. It is specifically designed for demanding high performance embedded computing (HPEC) military/aerospace applications such as command and control, ISR, signal processing, radar/sonar and electronic warfare.

The VP780 is a high-performance Xilinx® Virtex-7 VPX card with advanced digital signal processing capabilities. The design has been optimized for the implementation of complex FPGA algorithms with high throughput requirements. It is in the 3U VPX form factor, with a VITA 57-compliant FMC site making it possible to easily integrate I/O cards with A/D, D/A, RF capabilities and more.

The FMC140 is an analog-to-digital (A/D) FMC daughter card that provides four 16-bit A/D channels at 370 MSPS. It allows flexible control of sampling frequency and offset correction through serial communication buses, and is ideal for applications where limited space is available such as radar/sonar, wireless telecommunications, and aerospace test and measurement instruments.