Advanced Hardware-in-the-Loop Sensor Simulation

AFRL team develops advanced scene generation techniques for testing missile sensors.

AFRL researchers and their counterparts at CG², Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Quantum3D, Inc., are collaborating through a Phase II Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) contract to develop advanced scene generation techniques that support algorithm development and testing for the Missile Defense Agency’s nextgeneration missile sensors. Radiance Technologies, one of the CG² team’s key project participants, is adapting and optimizing government-furnished scene generation software and algorithms for use on the contract.

The goal of this effort is to fulfill the missile developer’s need for a highframe- rate, high-fidelity, personal computer (PC)-based missile seeker simulator. During Phase I of the SBIR contract, the CG² team completed design trade studies and feasibility analyses to determine the system requirements and design approach for a next-generation, commercial off-the-shelf (COTS), PCbased approach to hardware-in-the-loop (HWIL) scene generation. Under the Phase II contract, the CG² team will finalize the system design, implement a functional prototype system based on Quantum3D’s Independence® Image Generator (IG) Solution, and demonstrate the system’s capability to perform real-time scene generation using the government-furnished program code optimized by Radiance Technologies. The new system will provide a highfidelity HWIL environment for simulating the performance of missile defense sensors and systems under a variety of engagement scenarios (see figure). Key elements of this technology investigation include the incorporation of parallel graphic units (using the recently proposed advanced switching interface implementation of PCI Express®), as well as multiple parallel graphic processor units (GPU) per computer central processing unit. These implementation elements will enable AFRL-developed parallel graphics codes to leverage the GPUs’ higher processing throughput and thus improve highfidelity simulations.

To support the unique performance and fidelity requirements associated with HWIL applications, the CG² prototype system will include the COTS Independence IG Solution, modified to enable higher sustained frame rates, enhance full-scene antialiasing, and provide an optimized real-time Linux® operating environment. Combined with the team-optimized scene generation code, the enhanced Independence IG will supply an infrared scene generation system wherein multiple GPUs operate in parallel with pixel-level synchronization technology and channel composition to deliver the required high frame rate, extremely low-latency performance, and high level of fidelity (16 bits per color component, with 64 subpixel sampling for full-scene antialiasing). In addition, because the Independence IG Solution supports future technology insertion, the system will accommodate upgrades to further improve performance, throughput, and functionality. Scientists from AFRL’s HWIL simulation technology team worked with the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency’s Polymorphous Computer Architecture Program Office and several of its university- and contractor-based principal investigators to define this machine as a test bed for evaluating parallel computing advances in streaming architectures and the use of dynamic GPU mapping for complex physics-based simulations.