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Look no further, you will not find a company better equipped and experienced when it comes to providing rugged COTS TEMPEST enclosures for any bus-based or proprietary architecture military COTS TEMPEST application.
Elma-Mektron’s highly acclaimed and endorsed range of turnkey integrated TEMPEST solutions for hostile environments offer System Integrators, Defence Contractors and OEMs alike, a rapid, risk free and highly cost effective route to market, whatever the operational environment and regardless of hardware architecture.
Totally unequalled in the industry, Elma-Mektron can provide a tried and tested range of extremely rugged TEMPEST enclosures that are eminently suitable for the most onerous and hostile requirements of the defence industry.
Elma-Mektron has full BS EN ISO 9001:2000 accreditation and all system enclosures exceed the EMC requirements of EN55022 and EN50082, are fully IEEE 1101.1, 1101.10 and 1101.11 compliant and have CE conformity to EN 60950.
Commercial boards – hostile environment - No Problem!
– Call Elma-Mektron on 01234 838822 |
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Introduction
Battlespace Digitisation (BD) offers greatly enhanced information gathering and increased secure digital communication. This in turn coupled with an overwhelming desire amongst defence organisations to use COTS hardware has driven the need for specialised system enclosure solutions which inherently demand the highest levels of design integrity and manufacturing consistency. They all share a number of common requirements. Typically these can include: environmental robustness, EMC tight/secure, Nuclear Hardening, provide environmental protection for the integrated COTS hardware, offer high-availability and rapid MTTR (Mean-Time-To-Repair).
Frequently a very high emphasis is placed on EMC, particularly from a security perspective. Onerous EMC specifications including TEMPEST and DEF.STAN 59-41 Land Class 'A'/'B' are synonymous in this specialist industry sector.
What are TEMPEST Testing and Nuclear Hardening?
TEMPEST testing fundamentally ensures that no unintentional electromagnetic influenced emissions are generated from cryptographic (usually abbreviated to ‘CRYPTO’) and other equipment processing classified information. Naturally, unauthorised or uncontrolled access of third parties to data and information or its intentional destruction becomes a high priority issue for defence and indeed some civil operations.
Nuclear explosions generate high energy electromagnetic pulses with a fast rise time. This characteristic could cause damage to electronic equipment. Therefore military systems in particular have to be protected against such environmental conditions.
It follows therefore that having been heavily involved for a number of years on a high number of prestigious defence programmes of the above kind including; JTIDS, Bowman, Cormorant and Skynet 5 to name but a few, Elma-Mektron has arguably a totally unsurpassed level of expertise and product knowledge on offer.
Much of the defence secure communications system enclosure equipment designed and manufactured by the company incorporates a plethora of open bus COTS architectures such as VMEbus, CompactPCI, PC/104 and PCI/ISA and meet industry’s stringent high-availability requirements where redundant operation, quick accessibility and high reliability are essential as downtime is measured in minutes rather than hours. The aforementioned high levels of EMC/TEMPEST integrity and Nuclear Hardening requirements are therefore second nature to Elma-Mektron.
Like many other sectors within our defence business this is no exception as it calls invariably for a high degree of custom system enclosure design.
Overview of Construction Options
Every project undertaken is assessed in detail at the outset to ascertain the most suitable design/construction technique given the environmental and EMC requirements being sought.
Clearly there is a commercial versus design integrity balance to be struck here. Striking the correct design integrity balance necessitates properly interpreting the enclosure requirement as a whole while difficulties clearly result from a failure to do so. This subject matter is covered in more detail and can be found by visiting the 'Design Integrity' part of the website under the 'Design Aids' section.
An article entitled 'Getting your COTS system up and running takes much more than boards and software' written by
Elma-Mektron and covering this subject in more detail can be accessed and downloaded from the 'Technical Articles' part of the 'News' section of our website.
Therefore the construction method adopted will ultimately be dependent on the environmental and EMC specifications the equipment will have to meet. Accordingly the design solution could be fabricated from sheet aluminium, typically 3mm (0.12") thick, and incorporating Elma-Mektron’s internationally patented ‘Crush-Fold’ construction technique. Alternatively it could be based on our internationally patented ‘High Integrity Frame’ technology which utilises precision machined aluminium members and panels particularly for the more onerous environmental and EMC applications. In some cases a part fabricated - part machined approach is adopted to mitigate production costs provided it does not introduce uncomfortable levels of engineering risk to the programme.
Brief Summary of Typical Enclosure Design Options and Features:
• Can accommodate most onerous environmental/EMC specifications
• Fabricated sheet or machined aluminium design/construction
• VME, cPCI, PC/104, PCI/ISA and proprietary hardware architectures
• Mechanical and electrical TEMPEST Red/Black partitioning
• EMC specification to: TEMPEST and DEF-STAN 59-41 Land Class 'A' for example
• Environmental mitigation from: shock/vibration, high/low temperature, high humidity,
moisture, salt, mist, fog, low pressure, nuclear and biological contamination (NBC),
nuclear electromagnetic pulse (NEMP), fluid contamination, dust/sand, power
interruptions and power spikes/surges, etc.
• Redundant, hot-swap power supplies
• Redundant hot-swap thermal management systems
• Anti-tamper measures
• Extensive ‘CRYPTO’ and high-availability system enclosure experience
• Hardware and operating system software integration and test
• Networked housekeeping - SNMP capability to non-networked devices
• Transportable/operating case packaging solutions
• Full qualification testing and associated project management
• Through life support and obsolescence management
Power Supply Solutions
Elma-Mektron can offer a comprehensive range of power supply options that can be tailored specifically to meet the wide ranging and demanding application requirements of military communications system enclosures.
Such is our flexibility that we can accommodate almost any version of MIL-Spec or commercial power supply in the range of 200- to 1800-watt and beyond, AC single/three phase 45 to 440Hz input or DC input. From ATX PC style through to Telecom and full MIL-Spec units, you can be assured of a cost effective and reliable solution. Provision can also be made for redundant N+1 or hot swap plug-in power supply solutions for quick MTTR. Options can include AC and DC power rail monitoring and alarm generation.
Elma-Mektron offer a wealth of experience in the choice and integration of cost-effective enclosure power systems for COTS airborne, seagoing and land mobile applications.
Example of Design Specification Options:
• EMC to MIL-STD-461, DEF.STAN 59-41, BS3G100 and TEMPEST
• Mechanical Vibration to MIL-STD-167 and DEF.STAN 66-31
• Shock to MIL-S-901 and DEF.STAN 07-55
• Environments to MIL-STD-810
• Input transients and spikes to MIL-STD-704, DEF.STAN 61-5 and BS3G100
• Wiring to DEF.STAN 61-12 and 66-31
• Epoxy paint finish to DTD5555A (MIL-C22750F)
Quality and Test
All of Elma-Mektron's standard and custom system enclosures undergo a comprehensive test and inspection schedule covering every facet of system build, function and safety, guaranteeing complete product integrity. The company has full BS EN ISO 9001:2000 accreditation and is a recognised authority on EMC with its own in-house pre-compliance EMC test chamber. A full test/inspection report, 'C of C' and 'D of C' (where relevant) comes with every system.
Warranty
All of our system enclosures are covered by a 12-month warranty from the date of shipment. The warranty covers all mechanical items, backplanes, power supplies, cooling fans, components, cables, connectors and switches but does not cover faults attributed to misuse.
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Rugged high-availability CompactPCI (2.16) 19" system enclosure for secure military communications. |
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Custom enclosure with proprietary hardware for secure military communications application. |
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Custom ATR PC/104 enclosure for secure aircraft data communications equipment. |
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Custom proprietary enclosure for secure communications naval application.
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PCI/ISA enclosure for secure military aircraft data comms undergoing EMC TEMPEST Testing.
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