Middleware tools ported to software radio platform

Edited by the Electronicstalk editorial team Apr 18, 2007

The Spectra Operating Environment and developer tools have been ported to the Flexcomm SDR (software defined radio) platform.

PrismTech, a provider of middleware and development tools, has ported its Spectra Operating Environment (OE) and developer tools to Spectrum Signal's Flexcomm SDR (Software Defined Radio) platform.

This port will enable Spectrum Signal users to migrate and upgrade easily their SDR development environment to PrismTech's SCA v2.2.2-compliant OE and to make use of Spectra's productivity tools for rapid application development.

Spectrum Signal's Flexcomm family provides fully integrated, black-side SDR platforms providing commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) 'RF to Ethernet' platforms for military communications programs.

Users of the Flexcomm SDR platforms include: Lockheed Martin, Motorola, The French Ministry of the Interior, NASA, the Government of Canada, and General Dynamics C4 Systems.

PrismTech's Spectra OE provides SDR developers with a complete and highly optimised Software Communications Architecture (SCA)-compliant OE with superior performance and a small footprint.

Spectra OE includes (pre-integrated and optimised): an SCA v2.2.2-compliant core framework; C and C++ ORB middleware; the required CORBA object services (lightweight log service, lightweight event service, lightweight naming service), and an XML parser; all in a package that requires under 0.75Mbyte of memory.

For comparison, many alternative SCA OE implementations require well over 10Mbyte of memory.

PrismTech's Spectra productivity tools generate code for any SCA-compliant platform and provide an integrated suite of SCA waveform and platform modeling, code generation, test and deployment development tools.

"Spectrum Signal has an impressive list of Flexcomm customers using, primarily, the SDR-3000 series military communications rapid-prototyping development platform", says Dominick Paniscotti, VP SDR Products, PrismTech.

"With this port, PrismTech is very pleased to be able to bring to this user base the significant functional and productivity benefits that Spectra's advanced SCA implementation and tools have to offer versus first-generation alternatives".