#modularopensystems

Slot profiles differ by their type and the arrangement of planes and other communications ports, including apertures for blind-mate optical and/or coaxial connections. SOSA further refines VITA 65 by defining a specific subset of 3U and 6U slot profiles.

There are four main types of defined Profiles for the SOSA standard:

Payloads: these can be Compute or I/O Intensive, or RF/Optical.

Switches: can be for RF/Optical or Data/Control Plane switching.

Radial Clocks: this profile is for positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) or RF navigation.

External I/O: this profile definition is primarily to bring legacy I/O in or out of the system.

The standard also defines a set of approved protocols that can be implemented by Plug In Cards (PICs) for each of the defined Pipes for general communications ports.

Perhaps surprisingly, one of the many benefits that the SOSA™ Technical Standard offers involve development chassis.

Development chassis are nothing new in embedded computing; they date back to the earliest days of VME, and labs often have development chassis for board design testing and bring up, subsystem testing, or software development and integration. Like deployable systems, development chassis have evolved alongside new industry opens standards.

Used by the US Army MORA is the U.S. Army DEVCOM C5ISR Center’s architecture for open radio frequency interfaces for ground vehicles. Its purpose is to offer new capabilities, including reducing size, weight, and power (SWaP) and improving interoperability functions within the platform. This 3U OpenVPX development platform provides a 6-slot backplane that supports plug-in card profiles aligned with the SOSA Standard. It supports the latest profiles used to develop systems that follow the hardware requirements of both SOSA and CMOSS

With its focus on open, modular system design, the SOSA architecture enables flexible integration of plug-and-play embedded computing components. Elma supports this with robust hardware platforms that accelerate development timelines and reduce integration complexity for advanced defense and aerospace programs.