2024 Military & Aerospace Technology Innovators Awards announced for aerospace and defense achievement
NASHUA, N.H. – Military & Aerospace Electronics has announced the 2024 Technology Innovators Awards to recognize companies offering substantial military, aerospace, and avionics design solutions.
Awards are in three tiers -- ranging from platinum, the highest, to the gold awards, and finally to the silver awards -- and are based on the recommendations of an independent panel of industry judges.
Platinum honorees
The Power Blade from AirBorn Inc. in Georgetown, Texas, is a 6U DC-DC module that offers 2000 Watts of power output -- nearly double compared to other 6U VPX Power Supplies. It is a SOSA-aligned, rugged, reliable, conduction cooled, switch mode unit built for high-end defense and space applications. The Power Blade has no minimum load requirement and has short circuit protection as well as over current and thermal protection. The Power Blade module is designed to support the rigors of mission critical airborne, shipboard, vehicle, mobile and space applications.
The SInergy from AirBorn Inc. is a high-speed, high-density modular hybrid interconnect that makes the most of board space by using one interconnect for several signal types. SInergy offers a mini-modular hybrid solution in 1 to 5 configurable bays; a 1 or 2 bay SInergy connector is roughly the size of a U.S. 25-cent coin. With speeds to 25 gigabits per second per lane or 75 gigabits per second aggregate bidi bandwidth per module, SInergy meets and exceeds popular protocols, and is tested and qualified to MIL-DTL-83513 performance requirements.
The Getac X600 rugged mobile workstation from Getac in Baoshan, Taiwan, provides cutting-edge computing in mission-critical environments. The X600 is tailor-made for expandability and can configure to suit many scenarios. It is designed to be mobile, thanks to a lightweight, yet rugged composition and batteries that can be hot-swapped in the field. The X600 brings Intel 11th gen vs 7th gen processor and related technology, 50 percent more battery capacity, increased ruggedness, capacitive instead of resistive touch, and PCI Express NVMe instead of slower SATA primary and optional storage.
The Cable Fault Locator for Manufacturing, Installing, and Troubleshooting Wiring Harnesses from Psiber Data Systems Inc. in San Diego provide the physical layer connectivity. Testing a harness from one harness end is a huge improvement over continuity testers (Digital Multimeter). A DMM requires both ends of a harness to be isolated and a test lead attached to both ends. Psiber has developed multi-channel CFLs that test harnesses using only one end. This is especially important when one end has limited accessibility and requires extensive effort to isolate. CFLs identifies faults and gives the location which provides essential information to make a repair.
The X9 Server from General Micro Systems Inc. in Rancho Cucamonga, Calif., offers mechanical, interconnect and thermal innovations. With more than 26 patents pending, this rugged small form factor (SFF) rackmount computer in a compact, portable chassis has add-in I/O and solid-state drive storage. Based on Intel's Xeon D Ice Lake, the microserver CPU has 20 cores operating at 3.1 GHz in Turbo mode with 30 megabytes of Smart Cache and as much as 128 gigabytes of DDR4 ECC DRAM. There are dual 100 Gigabit Ethernet fiber optic ports. Dual Thunderbolt 4 ports connect to other X9 modules over copper or fiber with 100 Watts of Power Delivery.
The Counter-Drone Immediate Response Kit (IRK) from DroneShield LLC in Warrenton, Va., consists of the RfPatrol Mk2, a portable detection device, and a DroneGun Mk4, a handheld defeat device, in one rugged case that offers situational awareness through the RfPatrol and expandable accessories and response, with the DroneGun Mk4 for end-to-end, on-ground, portable C-UAS. Detection The RfPatrol Mk2 is a wearable detector that provides real-time situational awareness without complex operation. The RfPatrol Mk2 integrates software-defined radio and uses AI for detection and classification. DroneGun Mk4 is a rugged, handheld cUAS effector provides countermeasure capability.
The RF+ System-in-Package from Spectrum Control in Fairview, Pa., is an RF+ system-in-package that delivers wideband RF front end in a 30-square-millimeter BGA package. It delivers an integrated microwave assembly in a surface-mount package, and functions as a co-processor to Direct RF FPGAs and mixed signal control processors. This can be applied to any RF subsystem where size, weight, power consumption, and cost (SWaP-C) are a factor. The first product in the series is an RF front end with a range of 6-18 GHz and unfiltered range of 2-20 GHz with 2 GHz instantaneous bandwidth.
The Enclosure Protector from Inventive Resources Inc. in Salida, Calif., protects enclosures from contamination brought by moisture and oxygen. It prevents air leakage with a combination of variable volume device, heat pipe, desiccant, oxygen absorber, and pressure and vacuum relief valves. Key benefits include keeping enclosure leak free and maintaining components clean and dry in new OEM enclosures; can be added to existing enclosures; avoids internal corrosion of enclosure components and electrical shorts; maintains enclosure at ambient pressure; has no moving mechanical parts; uses no outside power; and is suitable for high-humidity areas, corrosive environments, wash down areas, dusty, dirty, and wet environments.
The Teledyne FLIR Prism from Teledyne FLIR LLC in Wilsonville, Ore., brings end-to-end computational thermal imaging and decision support to the edge. It supports a wide array of projects and custom development that run on the latest generation of low-power, embedded mobile processors including from Qualcomm and NVIDIA. The Prism digital ecosystem enables integrators in defense, commercial, and industrial markets to enhance perception and reduce time to market for counter UAS, ground intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR), air-to-ground, and autonomous vehicle systems and applications.
The Sense interference-avoidance and anti-jamming system from Doodle Labs LLC in Marina Del Rey, Calif., is a long-range, high-throughput mesh datalink for advanced robotics. Sense is a feature-set for Mesh Rider Radios that dynamically addresses the challenges of interference and RF jamming for long-range, mission-critical drones. Sense is engineered to monitor in-band interference and automatically switch to an alternate channel or frequency band to find the best-performing frequency. When combined with Mesh Rider’s Low Probability of Intercept (LPI) and Low Probability of Detection (LPD) waveform, Sense ensures uninterrupted communications and connectivity for advanced drones in challenging environments.
Gold honorees
Milpower Source Inc., Miltech 9080 PDU with Gigabit Ethernet Switch; Real-Time Innovations (RTI), RTI Connext TSS; LCR Embedded Systems, 5 Slot VPX Rugged Test System; D-Fend Solutions, EnforceAir2 Software V. 24.04.2; Concurrent Real-Time, SIMulation Workbench on Windows; Elma Electronic, MORA Ready Development Platform (MRDP); Infineon Technologies, Rad tolerant N-channel MOSFETs; Inventus Power, CWB 3.6.2 InvincStable 200-Watt-hour Conformal Wearable Battery; Neousys Technology Inc., Neousys SEMIL-2000GC, 19-inch Rack Mount IP69K Waterproof Computer including NVIDIA L4 GPU; Curtiss-Wright Defense Solutions, Fortress CSR; Curtiss-Wright Defense Solutions, V3-1222 Avionics Processor; General Micro Systems, X9 Spider Workstation I/O; Elma Electronic, VNX+ Test and Development Chassis; Systel Inc., Sparrow-Strike small-form-factor rugged computer; and Lone Star Analysis, MaxUp ORDAIN (One-Shot Readiness Digital Twin AI Network).
Silver honorees
Star Lab Corp., Titanium Technology Protection; Rantec Power Systems Inc., 1200-Watt 3U VPX Power Supply; Kontron, Harakan compact mission computer with AI processing; Milpower Source Inc., Miltech 471 Smart Hub; Fuse Integration Inc., Network Provisioner; Advanced Cooling Technologies Inc., Vaphtek environmental-control unit; Curtiss-Wright Defense Solutions, Axon Pico A/D converter; Curtiss-Wright Defense Solutions, VPX3-623 Cisco Catalyst Switch; Anritsu Company, Field Master Pro family analyzers; Elma Electronic, Rugged deployable CMFF chassis aligned to SOSA™ with SAVE tray; Wind River Systems, Wind River Studio Virtual Lab; and Pendulum Instruments, FTR-210R GNSS-controlled Rubidium Frequency & Time Reference.
Don't see your company's name? Start thinking about submitting entries for the 2025 Military & Aerospace Electronics Innovators Awards, which should be announced in October 2025, with submissions starting in April 2025. More information is online at https://designengineering.endeavorb2b.com/military-aerospace-electronics-innovators-awards/.
