DSEi 2011: Harris shows off computing system

Harris RF Communications has unveiled its RF-7800N mobile computing platform to satisfy requirements from the battlefield for increased network demand.

Speaking to the media at DSEi in London on 14 September, officials said the platform would be compatible with the RF-7800S leader radio, adding that the company was working with a number of undisclosed customers for potential contracts.

'We are seeing increasingly networked battlefield demand for applications and services from
tactical users operating remotely, outside the range of centralised systems, applications and services,' a spokesman said.

The distributed computer power/network management device is designed to link network resources to the warfighter, he continued. It can be carried on board vehicles or connected to command posts and comprises a C2D Intel processor, 4GB of RAM, gigabit ethernet, an open architecture and less than 50W power consumption.

The system is capable of performing data collection and manipulation from multiple groups, video meta-tagging, dissemination, storage, network management, routing and traffic management as well as push and pull file transfer applications.

'This is designed to send priority mission critical data from the tactical edge to tactical operations centres,' it was added.

Describing the wider communications market, Harris RF Communications group president Dana Menhert said: 'Today you need a large stack of single band mission radios for point to point, line of sight, narrowband voice and low rate data communications.

‘We've implemented SDR, multiband radios and also wideband networking capability for video, e-mail and chat. What we do in the office we all take for granted - we can do that on the battlefield now.
This has resulted in a profound effect in changing the way in which our militaries fight with real time SA and dissemination of imagery.'