Web Page sponsor Oxley Developments
www.oxleygroup.com
Oxley Group Ltd
Oxley specialises in the design and manufacture of advanced electronic and electro-optic components and systems for air, land and sea applications within the military sector. Established in 1942, Oxley has manufacturing facilities in the UK and USA and enjoys representation worldwide. The company’s products include night vision and LED lighting, data capture systems and electronic components. Oxley has pioneered the development of night vision compatible lighting. It offers a total package incorporating optical filters, equipment modification, cockpit and external lighting along with fleet wide upgrade services including engineering, installation, support, maintenance and training. The company’s long experience of manufacturing night vision lighting and LED indicators, coupled with advances in LED technology, has enabled it to develop LED solutions to replace incandescent and fluorescent lighting in existing applications as well as becoming the lighting option of choice in new applications such as portable military hospitals, UAV control stations and communication shelters.
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29 Apr 10. The US Army has received a next-generation Firefinder radar shelter from Northrop Grumman. The integrated radar system detects and tracks hostile mortar rounds, artillery shells and rockets, instantly locating their source. The system is suitable for rapid deployment missions and is capable of handling simultaneous fire from multiple locations, detecting and reporting positions from the first round.
Firefinder can be transported in a C-130 aircraft and other helicopters, as well as on HMMWV vehicles in the battlefield. Northrop is currently upgrading a total of 50 Firefinder radar shelters for the US Army under a $285m contract as part of the ongoing radar system enhancement effort.
28 Apr 10. GE Intelligent Platforms today announced the ICS-8580 Rugged Video Streaming XMC, a powerful, compact, easy to use and flexible answer to the problem of capturing, compressing and delivering video. The ICS-8580 responds to the rapid growth in unmanned vehicles and their requirement to deliver high quality mission video over links that are often bandwidth-constrained. It is designed to be a simple, plug-and-play solution that requires minimal integration or software development. The ICS-8580’s XMC form factor means that it is small, lightweight at 100 grams/3.5 ounces and consumes little power – typically, 10 – 15 watts. These features, in conjunction with its rugged design, mean that it can be deployed in a wide range of demanding military and aerospace environments. Its flexibility is further enhanced by its ability to support numerous video formats with either two channels of high definition video or four channels of standard definition video. The ICS-8580 features the ultra-efficient, industry standard H.264 video compression codec, but is software-reconfigurable to enable it to support alternatives such as JPEG2000.
“With the ICS-8580, we have taken a task that was previously difficult, time-consuming and often costly and made it simple, quick and inexpensive,” said Christopher Lever, Global Product Manager, Sensor Processing and I/O at GE Intelligent Platforms. “For prime contractors, systems integrators and OEMs, the ICS-8580 delivers a sustainable competitive advantage through its use of innovative technologies, increasing customer productivity while minimizing program cost and risk and speeding time-to-market.”
The ICS-8580 provides input support for HD/ED/SD analog input signals, analog RGB formats from VGA to UXGA, as well as digital input formats such as 3G-SDI, DVI, and HDMI up to a maximum resolution of 1,920 x 1,080 or 1,600 x 1,200 pixels. An Altera® Arria® II GX FPGA combined with TI DSP signal processing provide exceptional compute power in a video XMC platform. Two TI TMS320D