SCA 4.1 Compliant REDHAWK

Recently at Geon, we completed a project where we created a Software Component Architecture (SCA) 4.1 compliant framework implementation as a core aspect of the project. For those not familiar with SCA 4.1, it is the latest version of the SCA specification developed by the Joint Tactical Networking Center (JTNC). SCA is intended to aid in the development of software defined radio systems while increasing portability and interoperability of applications.

Open-source REDHAWK complies with an older version of SCA, version 2.2.2. Leveraging our familiarity with SCA 4.1 from our sca-jtnc project, a proof-of-concept design that updates the subsystem in REDHAWK to deploy and manage SCA 4.1 compliant devices, we established a solid foundation for the full-scale transition to an SCA 4.1 compliant implementation.

Our new development extended the sca-jtnc project but still required thorough updates to all aspects REDHAWK. Our approach was to fork the REDHAWK baseline and update interface and descriptor definitions to comply with SCA 4.1. Using these interface and descriptor updates, we performed a major overhaul of the REDHAWK implementation to meet the new guidelines. During the development, we refactored the code base, removed redundant or unneeded parts, and modernized key pieces to simplify maintenance. REDHAWK included features that improved usability beyond the SCA 2.2.2 specification, and where appropriate, those features were adapted and kept.

With this approach, portability between REDHAWK and this new framework suffered, so we also developed conversion tooling to transform REDHAWK components, waveforms, and devices into assets for the new implementation. Additionally, we developed a new Integrated Development Environment (IDE) that is integrated into Microsoft Visual Studio Code, a powerful and ubiquitous tool used by developers worldwide. The new IDE is a plugin that allows a developer to generate new components, waveforms, and devices and to deploy and manage assets in an instance of SCA 4.1 implementation. More information on this coming in a future blog post.

If you are interested in talking with Geon about SCA 4.1 please contact us.