Heron Systems has an extensive background in developing flight and sensor models for Department of Defense customers. For the Navy's E-2C, Heron Systems developed flight, navigation, radar, IFF and ESM models that are used daily in the E-2C Systems Test and Evaluation Laboratory (ESTEL) at Patuxent River, Maryland. We have done similar work in support of the Navy's Aegis Surface Aviation Interoperability Laboratory (SAIL).

All of our simulation components are required to function with real-time constraints since we are directly stimulating the actual avionic systems. The simulation suite allows our customers to test software changes in the laboratory environment, with a high degree of confidence, and provides an ideal platform for performing interoperability testing with Navy and other DoD platforms.

In addition to developing individual sensor models, Heron Systems has specialized in putting together test environments that encompass many other simulation components from other vendors. These include scenario generators, data link simulators , gateway systems and Cooperative Engagement Capability (CEC) tools.

Combining these tools with the flight and sensor models developed in-house creates a powerful laboratory simulation environment that can be used to create complex scenarios for the research, development, test and evaluation (RDT&E)community.

The E-2C Tactical Driver is software developed to simulate/stimulate an E-2C tactical system located in the ESTEL. It uses the Tactical Driver Interface Protocol (TDIP) to receive target and control information from a gateway system and to send ownship data out. It includes flight, navigation, rotodome, radar and IFF models and formats the outputs of these models to the Tactical System Interface Unit (TSIU). When high fidelity sensor moderls are required, it interfaces to the Radar/IFF Simulation System (RISS) to provide the radar and IFF modeling.

Heron Systems has developed several software products and utilities for the distributed simulation protocols used by the Department of Defense. These include the Distributed Interactive Simulation (DIS) and the High Level Architecture (HLA). These protocols have been implemented as front end processors to isolate the simulation software from having to adapt to different protocols. A typical distributed event has a scenario generator communicating with one of the front end processors, whose job it is to relay the truth data to the simulation and the ownship data to the other particpants.

In addition to the front end processors, Heron Systems has developed several utility software programs that aid in test preparation, execution and data analysis. These include HLA tools for automatically generating much of the Federated Object Model (FOM) specific code, a tool to bridge HLA and DIS networks, and verification and validation tools for assessing HLA performance.

A few examples:

HLA I/O Gateway: provides the interface between the E-2C Tactical Driver and the HLA protocol. It isolates the Tactical Driver from the details of HLA, communicating to the Tactical Driver using an internal protocol.

DIS I/O Gateway: provides the interface between the E-2C Tactical Driver and the DIS network. It implements the DIS protocol and communicates to the Tactical Driver via an internal protocol to isolate the Tactical Driver from external communication protocols. It includes features to filter the DIS traffic, inject emission PDUs into the scenario and monitor the DIS traffic.

Heron Systems is actively developing embedded systems for the United States Navy as part of our laboratory aircraft support. We currently use the VxWorks operating system and the C programming language to produce custom solutions for our Navy customers. A typical system consists of a 6U VME chassis, one or more single board computers, commercial interface boards and custom interfaces developed by our prime contractor.

AICU: The AICU is an embedded, VME system used in the Navy's NC-130 aircraft. The NC-130 is a flying test bed for the advanced development model radar system that will be used in the E-2D. The AICU provides several mission critical functions, including a navigation translator, radar translator, and several other functions used to assist in the integration and testing of E-2D systems.