PrismTech’s Spectra delivering Total Customer Service to the Software Defined Radio (SDR) Business

Spectra is a complete package of new products, services, and partner programs for Software Defined Radio (SDR) OEMs, system integrators and independent software vendors. Spectra addresses the expanding SDR market by providing the industry with the most comprehensive customer service-focused product line available.

Spectra provides a 'total customer service' package that includes robust waveform and platform developer tools, high performance and low profile operating environments, full compliance support for SDR standards, expert professional services for all phases of SDR development and deployment, and dynamic OEM, SI, and ISV partner programs. Spectra SDR solutions support the Software Communications Architecture SCA 2.2 and 2.2.2, as well as the OMG’s Software Radio Specification.

The Spectra SDR development suite allows SDR developers to implement their own SCA-compliant waveforms, either new or from reformatted legacy, on SCA -compliant radios by providing a fully integrated end to end model driven development environment with an intuitive Eclipse-based GUI interface. Waveform and platform developers are freed from the tedious development of SDR middleware solutions and instead can concentrate solely on building waveforms, and start experiencing increased product quality, reduced cost, and faster time to market that delivers higher revenues and rapid return on investments. Spectra's high performance OE ensures architectural consistency for SDRs and with the complete and fully integrated Spectra CX provides code portability, re-use and extensibility as standards mature.

Spectra CX Tools

Spectra CX is a model-driven development tool that simplifies, accelerates, and validates a significant proportion of the SCA development process. Spectra CX validates SCA compliance at the architectural and unit test level, and generates correct-by-construction SCA compliant artifacts, such as: XML descriptor files, compliance test reports, and validation documentation. Spectra CX enables SCA and non-SCA software aspects to be developed together, integrated early, and thoroughly tested. Spectra CX also reduces development risk due to its consistent model-based approach. Together the above benefits result in faster time-to-market, lower costs, better software quality, and superior compliance for all SCA waveform and platform code developed with Spectra CX.
• Model with Spectra CX - Benefit from complete SCA system modeling components, applications, nodes, platforms, deployments
• Validate with Spectra CX - De-risk projects by validating early on, and throughout the development cycle
• Generate with Spectra CX - Accelerate and de-risk SCA development by generating correct-by-construction SCA artifacts
• Develop with Spectra CX - Design and develop SCA component behavioural code using Model-Driven Development (MDD)
• Execute with Spectra CX - Monitor the component system on its actual target, with the platform running multiple applications for complete testing
• Test with Spectra CX - Test early and often to minimize development risk

Spectra OE

Spectra Operating Environment i(OE) s the first complete COTS OE available from a single vendor. Spectra OE products deliver options to suit different target and waveform SWaP requirements, with very small footprints and highly optimized code for waveform development targeting small form-factor, high performance radios. Footprints for the various processor types are the smallest in the industry:
• < 1 MB memory for complete SCA-compliant OE on embedded GPP
• < 90KB of memory for software ORB on DSP
• < 3K logic cells/elements for hardware ORB on FPGA

The Spectra OE offers a significant advantage to radio vendors and system integrators as the only operating environment delivering the following features:
• Compliant with the leading standards and the most current versions(SCA, SW Radio Spec)
• Commercially developed, maintained and supported (COTS)
• Architected to support all SDR processor technologies (GPP, DSP, FPGA)
• Scalable across a broad range of platform types and sizes
• Delivered pre-integrated with CORBA ORB and Services and for RTOS of Choice: LynxOS, VxWorks, Integrity, Linux variants
• Tested using JTeL Test Suite (JTAP)

Spectra Professional Services

PrismTech's professional services organization brings world-class expertise and best-practice project management (Solution9001SM methodology) encapsulated in a broad range of offerings from our SDR experts: training, workshops, development, compliance testing, consulting.

Our experts have been involved in the design and development of SDRs since the mid 1990s and include original architects of the Software Communication Architecture (SCA) and co-founders of the Object Management Group (OMG) Software Radio Group. The team has extensive experience in building SDR component frameworks, using technologies such as UML, MDA, XML, and object middleware, and developing in languages such as C++, C, Java and VHDL.

We offer a full range of SDR consulting services covering both short and long-term engagements, from advisory services to full-scale development projects, examples of which are:
• Legacy waveform evaluation, modeling, and enhancement for compliance and porting
• Legacy platform services evaluation, modeling, and enhancement for compliance and porting
• Waveform portability testing
• Waveform and platform compliance analysis
• SDR standards knowledge
• Model-driven testing to verify compliance
• Technology-independent waveform design - allowing components to be readily ported to alternative platforms
• Abstracting functional waveform behavior from infrastructure - to ease migration across standards or versions of a standard
• Automating the generation of standards-specific SDR component infrastructure in the appropriate format (C++, C, VHDL) for the target platform (CF, RTOS, ORB)
• Delivering an architecturally consistent approach to supporting SDR standards across device technologies (GPP, DSP, FPGA), RTOSs and ORBs

Spectra Partner Programs

PrismTech is extending our total customer service to our SDR partner companies to ensure our collaborative efforts and joint offerings produce rapid returns on investment for all parties. Spectra partner programs are designed to help radio OEMs take full advantage of the COTS SDR market. Partnering opportunities include:
• accelerating time-to-market and lowering costs with SDR COTS tools and outsourcing SDR expertise
• developing small form factor platforms
• delivering COTS SDR platforms
• expanding offerings as 3rd party SDR waveform provider

The Spectra partnering programs offer complete support for marketing, sales channel, training, consulting, and technical activities, all delivered by PrismTech’s expert SDR staff.

The Spectra Advantage

Spectra benefits to SDR developers include:
• Faster SDR waveform development with focus on functionality, not radio targets
• Highly portable waveforms developed across architecturally consistent, high performance operating environments, with improved portability across future SCA specifications
• Reduced waveform porting and tuning efforts across multi-processor type and SWaP-constrained target platforms
• Higher productivity and quality from auto-generation of SCA code that ensures design, implementation, documentation and tests are in sync
• Ease of porting by transforming the models directly into source code using source code generators
• Reduced porting cycles as Spectra users establish a reverse engineering process that will build waveform models automatically from existing SCA XML files
• Faster compliance assurance of new and existing waveform with the Spectra user’s ability to generate and re-run compliance and acceptance tests on all existing, new and redesigned waveforms
• Rapid compliance with emerging SDR architecture standards, including new SCA versions and the OMG SW Radio Specification