Our long-standing leadership in technical standards, experience in critical global defense programs, and our extensive portfolio of products based on OpenVPX and SOSA, enable Elma to partner with our customers in test & development and deployment of equipment and infrastructure installed in the most demanding defense applications.
Get your quote!
No one knows SOSA like Elma Electronic. Elma is a leading industry participant in the development of the technical standards, of which the root is based on the OpenVPX architecture. We are pioneers of and key contributors to the development of the standard, with leadership roles in several key technical and business committees.
In the Beginning
The DoD memo of January 2019 was signed by the secretaries of all three major service branches, calling for a Modular Open Systems Approach (MOSA). It was codified into law under Title 10 U.S.C. 4401(b) which now requires the DOD to use a standardized, modular system architecture when developing and acquiring new military systems. It prioritizes flexibility, interoperability, and cost-effectiveness through open standards and competitive procurement practices, effectively making MOSA a preferred method for implementing open systems within the DoD. For more details on the Approach, visit the Defense Logistics Agency's website.
The law specifically calls out the Sensor Open System Architecture (SOSA) as one of the key open standards to embrace. Together industry and government developed , the SOSA technical standard to be a modular, open architecture designed to help accelerate defense equipment modernization for the warfighter in areas of EW, SIGINT, EO/IR, and C5ISR.
It's All About the Slot Profiles
Slot profiles differ by their type and the arrangement of planes and other communications ports, including apertures for blind-mate optical and/or coaxial connections. SOSA further refines VITA 65 by defining a specific subset of 3U and 6U slot profiles.
There are four main types of defined Profiles for the SOSA standard:
Payloads: these can be Compute or I/O Intensive, or RF/Optical.
Switches: can be for RF/Optical or Data/Control Plane switching.
Radial Clocks: this profile is for positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) or RF navigation.
External I/O: this profile definition is primarily to bring legacy I/O in or out of the system.
The standard also defines a set of approved protocols that can be implemented by Plug In Cards (PICs) for each of the defined Pipes for general communications ports.
Learn About the SOSA Standard - Elma's Tutorial Series
Welcome to part one in our series of video tutorials on the SOSA Technical Reference Standard. In this first episode, you will get an introductory overview of the standard and learn about the all-important slot profiles, the key to how plug-in cards fit into a backplane to form a system We also examine how integrators can best make use of the key aspects of the SOSA standard.
Watch the SOSA Tutorial Part I
Elma's Portfolio of Products Aligned to SOSA
High Speed Backplanes
The backplane is at the heart of it all. High-performance signal integrity design is critical to reliable and successful systems aligned to SOSA, Building on decades of backplane manufacturing experience, Elma engineers are innovation leaders in high-speed signal processing design and developed the industry’s first SOSA backplanes.
- VITA 66.4 optical, 67.1 RF and 67.3 RF/optical modules
- Up to 100 Gbase-KR4
- Slot counts from 2 - 12
- Radial clock slot for IEEE 1588 precision timing protocol and network synchronization
The highest level of signal integrity
At speeds up to 100 Gbase-KR4, every feature of backplane design can influence signal integrity (SI) – every trace, layer separation, turn bend, via, via transition, etc. Elma’s signal integrity analysis and simulations consider every element in the channel to ensure optimal performance.
We focus on each feature individually to model the complete channel and optimize the return loss for each. Once modeled, they are concatenated together along with the trace and connector models to create the complete channel. Today’s critical high-speed systems require nothing less than reliable, repeatable solutions - every time.
Chassis Platforms - for Test & Development and Deployment
Elma addresses the chassis platform from the early stages of test and development with follow-through to the end deployment requirements. Choose from our range of CompacFrame test platforms that accommodate air, conduction, an air flow-through configuration. IPMI chassis management and power are included.
Deployment is always the end goal, so we work with our customers to determine the specific end requirements for the system - will it need to be rugged, withstand harsh environmental factors, shock or vibration challenges? Elma has experience successfully addressing all of those challenges.
Plug-In Cards
Elma and its partners collectively offer an ecosystem of boards and software solutions to implement a deployable field platform aligned to SOSA. Embedded boards, or Plug-in Cards (PICs) can effectively be selected and configured according to the capability requirements.
Elma works with key partners to provide solutions that include PICs. Below are a sampling of what we offer.
Payload - Compute- or I/O-Intensive which can include Intel, Arm or GPGPU based cards.
Switches - we carry several Ethernet switches with up to 100 GbE speeds
Ask us about Radial Clock and External I/O options.
Integrated Development Systems for Deployable Capability Fielding
The Modular Open RF Architecture, or MORA, is an open architecture developed by the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) to address the challenges of rapidly evolving and increasingly complex radio frequency (RF) systems. Elma along with partner Sciens Innovations has developed an integrated development system that simplifies the process of creating RF signal processing capabilities.
The MORA Ready Development Platform significantly accelerates integrating existing applications within the MORA space. It is pre-integrated with all the PICs you need to build an RF system. Several boards have already been tested and ported with Sciens' helux Tool Suite and more are becoming available.
Ask us about other pre-integrated development platforms for AI application development, or for specific field mission capabilities for EW, SIGINT, ELINT, EMSO, C5ISR / CMFF, etc.
Other Resources:
Webinars
We've developed and recorded numerous webinars on all things related to the SOSA technical standard and how it can be implemented. Browse the titles and find the ones that fit your interests.
Brochures
Download our SOSA Brochure, which includes a top level overview of the standard with slot profile drawings and more. It also gives an overview of Elma's product and service offerings aligned to SOSA.
SOSA Technical Reference Standard
The latest version is Edition 2, Version 2 and can be downloaded here.
Other related documents, like the Reference Implementation, Acquisition, Business Guides, can be found on the SOSA website.