At long last, SOSA open-systems standards guidelines officially released; now comes compliance testing
SAN FRANCISCO – U.S. electronics open-systems standards experts have published the first official version of the Sensor Open System Architecture (SOSA) technical standard, which is intended to reduce development and integration costs for military capabilities and reduce time to field.
The Open Group in San Francisco published the Technical Standard for SOSA Reference Architecture, Edition 1.0 on Thursday 30 Sept. 2021. Prior to that date, all SOSA-aligned embedded computing components followed guidelines of preliminary SOSA standards, rather than an official version.
SOSA 1.0 is to streamline U.S. military capabilities by enabling rapid, affordable, cross-platform capabilities based on best practices of system, software, hardware, and electrical and mechanical engineering.
The new standard encapsulates fundamentals of the Modular Open Systems Approach (MOSA) design approach to develop embedded computing solutions for military applications that involve a unified set of sensor capabilities.
Related: Open-systems standards like SOSA could promote genuine embedded computing interoperability
The SOSA Consortium aims to create a common framework for moving electronics and sensor systems to an open-systems architecture based on key interfaces and open standards established by industry and government consensus.
The open architecture supports aerospace and defense applications for manned and unmanned surface vessels, submarines, aircraft, land vehicles, and spacecraft. The goal is to reduce development and integration costs and reduce time to field new sensor capabilities.
With the new SOSA 1.0 standard in place, The Open Group is formalizing compliance testing to enable embedded computing manufacturers to meet guidelines of the SOSA standard. Those introducing products intended to meet the standard but that have not gone through compliance testing will be considered SOSA-aligned.
Some of the first SOSA-compliant embedded computing components are expected to hit the market within the next nine months. For more information contact The Open Group online at www.opengroup.org.
