NAVICON A/S

Introduction

INTEGRATION of combat- , navigation- and C3I systems carrying mission-critical military real-time data is of crucial importance to modern military units and command structures.

Yet, such integrations are complex and critical to design and implement. Often they are part of modernization and upgrade projects, or parts of new and complex systems developed by large and/or multinational organizations.

Navicon is a skilled and experienced systems integrator.

Our focus is systems integration.

We know, that a successful integration requires not only electrical and software protocol understanding – but also solid knowledge about the user’s domain and data models in order to understand how to perform mappings of data values between any number of systems.

The big picture

It is important to establish an initial overview of the integration problem(s) to be solved. Is the issue bi- or multilateral (EAI)? What kinds of computers, operating systems, programming languages, communication media etc. are used? What protocols (proprietary, NATO standards, open standards) are used? What data models are used by either party? What human resources might be required from the customer or his suppliers to ensure successful integration? What is the total cost and timescale of the implementation? What are the risks?

Navicon can answer those questions; and knows that solving integration problems requires close co-operation with customers and suppliers.

Founded in 1997, NAVICON develops custom software for mission-critical real-time systems. The company has in particular gained experience in real-time communications and presentation of real-time data on advanced graphical user interfaces.

Among the customers of NAVICON are the Royal Danish Navy, Bombardier Transportation (Signal) A/S, and Danelec Electronics A/S.

Elements of success

A successful integration requires connectivity at:

1. the hardware level

serial communications, networks, radio links, etc.

2. the software protocol level

the ability to read and write valid information to and from the involved systems.

3. the data mapping level

the ability to convert data between different system’s data models (simple cases such as converting units (knots to m/sec) – but also advanced cases where several fields of information must be combined to map to a valid value on the receiving system).

The data mapping level often carries the highest project risk. The key to successful integration is not at the hardware or the protocol levels – it is in understanding the user’s needs for correct and meaningful exchange of tactical information – also between “mismatching” systems.

Example projects

Navicon has solved integration issues such as:

1. connecting legacy military main frames to modern workstations and servers in national C4I upgrade projects,

2. integrating real-time digitized radar video on top of charts-based displays of C4I systems,

3. connecting GPS and gyro/inertia systems to C3 and navigation systems onboard warships via embedded navigation computers, and

4. connecting different countries’ military C3I systems by mapping of Naval formatted messages (OTH/GOLD) to and from national systems.

Customers

Among the customers of Navicon are the Royal Danish Navy and Danelec Electronics; a leading supplier of marine computer technology for navigation and voyage data recording.

Technologies

System integration solutions from Navicon are to a large extent based on open source software.

Our engineers possess several years of experience with Linux systems, and open source components, from which our custom solutions are built.

Open source solutions tend have high quality of support, and over the years, Navicon has gained thorough insight into many of the tools, and can provide in-house support for a variety of them. The quality of support for open source software is high, and certainly competitive to most proprietary and commercial alternatives.

Conclusion

Navicon is your option to keep the focus of your development organisation on new systems, new features, new challenges.

Navicon provides the experience and expertise to ensure the successful in-time and on-cost integration with al-most any legacy system, national system or NATO system. Navicon’s capabilities reduce your project risk.

Our solutions are cost-effective, often based on open-source components and would typically run on servers, desktop computers or embedded systems with UNIX operating systems like Linux or Solaris.