Mobile Radar Systems are crucial to the artillery radar team to quickly locate enemy long-range artillery and rocket launcher positions. The system technology features include high-speed computing, automatic target recognition, computer-based decision aids and high-speed networks.
Kontron’s 6U VME PowerPC boards are part of major Mobile Radar Systems programs. While being available in rugged conduction cooled for the harshest environments and providing very high Digital Signal Processing performance, the Kontron’s 6U VME Computing Nodes computers are the right choice for this sort of applications.

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The planning and development of the entire control system for the subway and suburban railway network in Warsaw was carried out by the Faculty of Transport at the Warsaw University of Technology in co-operation with Kontron. The world-renowned ‘Remote Control and Supervisory System’ was first installed in 1994. The subway system has expanded rapidly and so too has the control technology. A distinctive technical achievement for rail transport safety is the computer

interlocking system, which complies with SIL-4, the highest railway safety standard. This guarantees the correct interaction of more than 3,000 real-time I/Os. The hardware configuration will be available for years on end and offers an extremely high MTBF.

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At 4.02.2005 Kontron East Europe finished the biggest project in his history „Extension of a subway train remote control system” – it was the great success of the KEE team specially for the 10 years anniversary of the KEE. The work has been done in co-operation with Warsaw University of Technology - inventors of the remote control system. Beside commercial success it was also big technological step for train control systems in Poland, at station A18 has been installed an original Polish computer based on the interlocking system SIL‑4 with voting system 2 from 2 with cold reserve. For communication inside the remote control system Profibus L2 is used, locally for exchanging data Ethernet or RS is used when applicable. The whole communication system is based on fiber optic transmission.

Hardware used in the system, system contains several levels designed on different platforms:

In 1999, there was CJSC “Moscow Monorail” established and the program “Moscow Monorail Transport” approved which is aimed at developing a monorail transport system in Moscow, with the participation of the Government of Moscow and Federal State Unitary Enterprise “Moscow Institute for Heat Engineering”.
Moscow Monorail Transport System (MMTS) – is not just a new type of the rolling-stock, but it’s a new spin in the field of automation control of complex transport systems. In the framework of the project RTSoft company developed and implemented dispatch control system (DCS) at the first length of the railroad between the stations “Sergei Eizenschtein Street” and “Timiryazevskaya Metro Station”. Moscow monorail is a sophisticated technical complex which is composed of a line with 12 passenger stations, electro rolling-stock (ERS), a train shed with a transborder (a mechanism for leading trains out to the line), railroad substations, automated track switches, railroad safety devices, communication systems and many others. Dispatch control system is used to control such a sophisticated complex.

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To brake a moving object in a controlled manner is quite a complex job. One of Kontron's customers is the worlds largest brakers in the world. They equip mainly rail-based transportation equipment with brakes and brake controls. Considering a multi-car train with different loads it is clear that braking such a train precisely without skidding, brake locking or even de-railing is quite a complex job. This customers use 3U VME boards from Kontron.

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During March 2007 a series of QinetiQ research activities culminated with a Royal Air Force (RAF) pilot successfully controlling multiple unmanned aircraft from the cockpit of a Tornado military jet. For this series of flight trials, QinetiQ’s sophisticated control software was hosted on a dedicated Kontron platform comprising a mix of standard, off-the-shelf boards based on 3U CompactPCI® and VME embedded computing form factors as well as Kontron industrial servers.

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Kontron has developed together with Otomelara, one of the leading military companies and part of the Finmeccanica group, a rugged portable solution within less than 6 months. The NATO green product called CompactPCI MilPAC can be operated at a temperature of - 20°C and withstand splash water (up to IP 54) without issue. The MilPAC, which has now become a standard product for Otomelara, is used in maintenance and inspection systems for turrets manufactured by the Italian company. It is already in use throughout the world for many different Military Forces.

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Unmanned Avionic Vehicle are more and more used in military roles not only in surveillance but also in attacks to avoid human beings in dangerous areas. The UAV are pre-programmed to carry out fully autonomous missions and can be redirected in flight by the operator on the ground. The Kontron’s 6U VME PowerNode5 has been chosen in THALES UAV major program by fitting all the high requirements while offering high speed RapidIO switch fabric and dual 970FX processing powerful necessary for Digital Signal Processing.

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Modern vessels such as frigate embark many computers. Massively parallel computation is required to process all signals for Radar, Sonar, Optronics, Electronic warfare applications called High Performance Embedded Computing (HPEC). Kontron PowerPC systems have been selected to power the most modern Frigates in the European fleets. The delivery of pre-certified turn-key Kontron platforms with rich software stacks give the equipment integrators a quicker path to application development and provide the assurance of long term support at the computer level for all this major ship equipment.

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Radars, and more sharply Signal Aperture Radars (SAR), digital processing systems needs an association of powerful processing nodes and efficient data interfaces to sustain both the high throughput data flows delivered by the sensors and computing nodes. In airborne application, the constraints of minimum of weight, high temperature of operation, as well as immunity to shocks and vibrations are added to the intrinsec performance in signal processing. The Kontron‘s 6U VME PowerNode5 has been chosen both in UAV major program and in the Rafale fighter by fitting all the high requirements while offering market standard RapidIO high speed switch fabric and dual PowerPC970FX processing powerful necessary for Digital Signal Processing.

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Satellite ground stations combine the requirements of 7/7 uninterrupted operation, many years of field service and the implementation of computers in some odd places on the globe. Kontron VME Integrated Platforms have been selected to be the heart of the future European GPS system ground stations. The eleven 6U VME x86 board Platform processes the ultra precise clock signals which give this positioning system its outstanding precision. Turn-key computers have been delivered to multiple partners of the program. They operate under Linux or a certifiable version of a Real-Time O.S.

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Kontron produces ultra low power-dissipating 6U VME Single Board Computers (SBCs) for the driverless automated trains that connect air terminals in many airports around the world. Kontron embedded computers contribute to the reliability of the driverless train shuttle at the airports of London Heathrow, Beijing, Singapore, Dallas Fort Worth, Madrid and Miami. Dissipating less than 7 Watts, this SBC, the VCE405 can be used in fan-less natural convection environments. For automated train applications, the commercially available VCE405 has been enhanced with an application dedicated features, including a front panel display and a 'VITAL' processor reliability feature. Kontron's design team has integrated these enhancement features into the COTS product as a manufacturing build option for the full benefit of the customer. This COTS-Modified, custom COTS product marries the low cost advantage of COTS products with the advantages of COTS products shipped in volume, namely short lead time, low recurrent costs, best manufacturing quality and permanent obsolescence monitoring, providing the perfect fit to the application needs through the tailorization of the product.

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Data and voice communications with military vehicles have very specific requirements. Besides "ordinary" functionality, the unit and all of its components which are placed inside the vehicles have to fulfill very specific temperature ranges as well as high shock and vibration resistance.

Providing a software operating platform, which is not used anymore in today's markets, but still validated for the military standards, was a must. Kontron engineers succeeded in finding missing pieces in the world wide web community, modifying, adapting, and testing, within a few weeks.

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Siemens Transportation Systems (STS) relies on Kontron Transportation high-end technology to design new, successful products. Kontron 6U CompactPCI, 19 inches/84TE meets highest constraining railway requirements and norms. This system is composed of 2 calculators networked with a permanent Ethernet connection installed in the underground driving cab.

It allows following functionalities:

• Automatic piloting of the underground thanks to a real time industrial PC with Pentium MMX 166 processor working under VxWorks operating system
• Multimedia functions including audio announcements, passenger carriages video surveillance and a maintenance assistance device (Multimedia PC assembled around an ETX–PIIIM 650 module working under WinXPE operating system with JAVA applications)

Permanently connected to the centralized driving cab, this system guarantees to its owners a perfect reactivity and a real time management of all vehicles.

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DECLIC is a French generic experiment facility for scientific material research under a micro-gravity environment on board the International Space Station. Experiments are inserted in the facility and can be exchanged with inserts from other scientific teams. The facility is a co-operative project of CNES-NASA and under contract run by EADS Space Transportation. The University of Amsterdam-IDEAS UvA b.v. designed the thermal control electronics, containing a Kontron CompactPCI Pentium board, and two experiment containers. A second Kontron CompactPCI board is located in the data handling hardware section.

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Kontron has realized a CompactPCI based train control system for the French railways. There are approximately 200 control units and 2000 field units on the track connected by Ethernet. Such mission critical systems require 100 percent reliability. Therefore the fail-over control units are designed with two different hardware and software technologies for redundancy: An x86 based part with the a 3U Intel^® Pentium M CPCI board, the CP306, running under Linux RT-OS and a PowerPC 8540 based part with LynxOS. If any failure occurs in one system, regardless if software or hardware, the redundant system takes over. The outdoor units placed on the rails are equipped with the E^²Brain Computer-on-Module, due to features like extended temperature range, resistant to harsh environment conditions, and high reliability.

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Qinghai-Tibet Railway is the highest altitude and most long-distance railway in altiplano of the world. 960 km of the Qinghai-Tibet railway located 4,000 meters above the sea level and the highest point at 5,072 meters. The project is dubbed an "engineering marvel" because there were and are many technical difficulties for such a railway which was built on the permafrost for such a high altitude. On the second section from Golmud to Lhasa, 1142 km completely, include 45 train station and 38 are unstaffed. To meet the system requirements, a Intelligent Autonomous Decentralized Systems (IADS) technologies was applied to such a low-density line for first time in China.  Some key technologies adopted in the system like signaling system were provided from Kontron. Based on CompactPCI system, most valued reliability, flexibility and long-term availability were delivered to the whole management system.

To offer a maximum of comfort to the passengers during intercity travels, tilting technology is more & more implemented in the new generations of trains. This equipment is based on 2 parallel independents computer networks for 100 percent safety of different technologies (first system: VME based on 68k with VRTX32; second system: VME based on x86 with QNX) to minimize common mode risks. Helped by a very large portfolio of Kontron COTS products Kontron realized successfully this equipment by a judicious choice of reliable & stable standards like Vrtx32, QNX and VME for the system bus.

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Voyager, Bombardier Tilting train for Virgin, United Kingdom.
(Photo copyright of Bombardier).

JSC Russian Railways is a large-scale rail transport company for both cargo and passenger trains. The Russian Federation founded the JSC Russian Railways Company and they widely use Kontron's CPCI products (i.e. CP605, CP690, CP-ASM10-PSB) for their automatic switching systems. With this technology they have the ability to reduce many delays associated with traditional switching.

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The AGC (Autorail Grande Capacité) from Bombardier is part of the latest generation of regional trains for local and long-distance travel. Kontron developed the hardware of the Train Management System (TMS), the Graphical User Interface (GUI) and the Remote I/Os of the AGC.

The conductor and maintenance personnel use the GUI to access the TMS in real time. The TMS acts as the central system of the train and is also a gateway in between several networks like WTB, MVB, LON, CAN, Ethernet and wireless connections offering remote connections. The goal is to have a fast and transparent data transfer of the train’s core functions and to manage the passenger oriented comfort systems. The Remote I/Os are developed by Kontron to offer an optimized economic solution for I/O’s decentralized management on a network like MVB-, or Ethernet.

The EN50155 standard for electronic railroad applications places heavy demands on the Kontron hardware. The standard assumes that electronic systems on trains will need to operate 24 hours a day for 30 years, or approximately 250,000 hours, without failure. This means that train management systems must be designed to withstand the toughest environmental conditions: extended temperature ranges (-40°C to +85°C), humidity, vibrations and power fluctuations. Even heat build-up and therefore energy absorption have to stay within narrow ranges: only passive cooling technologies are permitted.

Picture of a train management system
 

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Kontron has built up a solid experience within embedded electronics for railways. During these last seven years, Kontron has been involved with the deliveries of embedded computers in the following key projects: AGC (Autorail Grande Capacité), East TGV, Autorail (CFD) and JAVAVAL (automatic train in Lille city) in France. Other projects in the United Kingdom include Virgin’s Voyager, Electrostar, Turbostar, Meridian and Pioneer. With this knowledge, Kontron offers solutions based on generic electronic platforms completely EN50155 certified.

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For the use in ships and submarines Kontron has developed a rugged solution that has ultra low radiation capability and is almost noiseless. The system, which is based on industrial motherboard technology, is used for visualization and frame grabbing purpose. The HMI also easily adjusts to the extreme light conditions in a submarine. This fully custom product is meant to operate under extreme conditions and withstand salt water and salt fog without any problems. It is already used in various Navy Forces.