Northrop Grumman unveils integrated vehicle area network

Northrop Grumman Corporation today unveiled the new Smart Integrated Vehicle Area Network (SiVAN), which provides even greater capabilities and important reductions in size, weight and power over larger centralized hub style systems while still reducing warfighter workload and greatly enhancing situational awareness.

SiVAN builds on Northrop Grumman's innovative vehicle digital backbone technology. The company's open architecture, "plug-and-play" digital backbone is designed specifically for military vehicles and brings highly survivable network communications, sensor integration and cross-cueing to ground vehicle platforms.

Scalable and modular, SiVAN is compliant with the VICTORY (Vehicular Integration for C4ISR/Electronic Warfare Interoperability) architecture and consists of two commercial off-the-shelf components: a Device Interface Node and a Common Display connected using a gigabit Ethernet (802.3) creating a fault tolerant, ring architecture utilizing standard IP networking technologies.

"Users at recent SiVAN field tests were extremely pleased with the system's overall superior performance, ranging from simplicity of design and ease of installation to exceptionally low video latency and minimal vehicle footprint," said Kay Burch, vice president of communications, intelligence and networking solutions for Northrop Grumman's Land and Self Protection Systems Division. "Invariably, we find vehicle crew members are immediately comfortable and confident using the intuitive and very user-friendly graphics user interface."

SiVAN's heritage is rooted in the avionics industry where reliable, low-latency performance, combined with fault tolerance and graceful degradation of capabilities, is critical. Northrop Grumman brings this heritage in a tailored and scalable architecture to the ground vehicle operational environment, providing a simple, common sensor integration suite that is available now.

"We provide an inherently future-proofed architecture designed to integrate today's legacy stove-piped systems simply and efficiently while accommodating future capabilities and technologies as they come online," Burch said.

Source: Northrop Grumman