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Satnews Daily
April 22nd, 2019

BAE Systems Makes Space Missions More Flexible with New Software-Defined Radio Assembly 


BAE Systems' new general software-defined radio assembly provides high reliability for commercial and Department of Defense space applications. The SDR integrates the company's RAD5545™ Single Board Computer (SBC) with advanced Field Programmable Gate Array-based transceivers, enabling flexibility, on-orbit reprogrammability and increased capacity for signals processing. The SDR assembly will be developed and produced in BAE Systems' sites in Manassas, Virginia and Merrimack, New Hampshire.


The software defined radio's unique, upgradeable SpaceVPX architecture can accommodate an alternate transceiver or design improvement while etaining the integrity of the assembly. (Photo: BAE Systems)

Ricardo Gonzalez, director of Space Systems at BAE Systems said that the flexibility allowed by the general-purpose software defined radio for customers to reprogram missions makes this hardware a product their customers will be able to use into the future. Coupled with their RAD5545™ technology, the processing power and capability enables their customers to apply their spacecraft to multiple missions that evolve over its lifespan.

The software defined radio's (SDR) upgradeable SpaceVPX architecture can accommodate an alternate transceiver or design improvement while retaining the integrity of the assembly. To facilitate broad application, it was designed to host third party hardware and mission intellectual property or algorithms. The SDR provides multiple receive and transmit channels that can be configured for different applications, like weather sensing, flexible communications payload, or specialized radio frequency sensing.

The RAD5545™ SBC delivers exponential improvements in processing throughput and bandwidth as compared to predecessor products. The SpaceVPX RAD5545 computer is powered by the radiation hardened general purpose System-on-Chip processor.