Design & Engineering Services

INTRACOM DEFENSE through international industrial co-operations and design of innovative products and systems has established a multi-discipline capability in the engineering development, qualification and low rate initial production of complex electronic systems.

Through years of experience in developing systems for the defense sector our HW engineering team has been acquainted with defense standards, procedures and methodologies that follow the complete product life cycle starting from requirements capture, system design, development, testing, integration, verification and qualification.

Through its active participation our HW engineering team has developed excellence and innovation skills along with professional experience to undertake effectively various types of multinational projects ranging from overall system down to hardware level subunit design achieving rapid development cycles by assuring to the highest degree compliance to customer specifications.

Development work follows Military Methods and Standards on Safety, Electromagnetic Compatibility (e.g. MIL-STD-461), Environmental Stress (e.g. MIL-STD-810), Reliability (e.g. MIL-STD-217, 756, 1629 etc.) and Data Security, applied on specific product/customer requirements.


Our HW engineering team is mainly organized into six different technological areas:

RF design:

Extensive know-how in system architecture, design and implementation of RF systems and sub-systems, in analysis of radio wave propagation, channel modelling, coverage and availability analysis, as well as in electromagnetic analysis. Specifically for the RF design, the main technological expertise and interests are: Full radio Transceiver Design, RF modules design such as: RF & IF Amplifiers (High power up to 100 W, LNAs, Medium power, high linearity amplifying circuits), VCOs, PLL (Integer-N & Fractional-N, DDS), Filters (Discrete & Microstrip) & switching Filterbanks, RF Switches (high power, very fast < 1us), Limiters, Mixers, Quadrature Modulators, VGA, AGC & ATPC loops, couplers, antennas etc.


Modem Baseband design:

Significant expertise in digital communications and signal processing, baseband and radio-system level algorithmic design and implementation for fixed and mobile communications for ground, naval and airborne applications. The Group is focused in Baseband transceiver specification, modelling, design and implementation of SDR architectures. Core technologies of interest are Multi-carrier (OFDM, MC-CDMA, OFDMA) and single carrier (CPM, QAM), with LPI/LPD Techniques (Frequency Hopping, DS-SS, MC-SS etc.), Diversity MIMO, Adaptive antennas algorithms and Cognitive Radio engines. Extensive knowledge on channel estimation – characterization, modelling and lab evaluation by using state of the art real-time channel emulators.


Digital & Analog design:

Design and implementation of all analog / digital / VLSI subsystems and systems. The main technological expertise and interests are low power microcontrollers, ethernet communication and high speed network processors, high speed digital buses and DDR memories, standard bus form factor interconnection technologies such as VME / PC104 / cPCI, high capacity / speed and secure FPGAs, Tempest design, special security features implementation, analog and mixed mode electronics design, electro acoustics design and measurements as well as acoustical measurements.


Power Supply design:

Significant know-how in specification, design, development and verification of power supplies, power supply systems, power generation systems, power control and power distribution networks. Power Design incorporates cutting-edge technology regarding power systems compactness, efficiency and reliability. Design expertise gained through core involvement in Component level design and development of AC/DC and DC/DC switching power converters, battery operated supply systems and battery support systems. Design & development experience extends from single auxiliary power systems to complicated platform power supplies (e.g. missiles, military ground vehicles, naval platforms).


Electronic CAD & CAM design:

The group specializes in the design of PCB (Printed Circuit Board) based on inputs from schematic diagram and mechanical drawing. It creates CAD component symbol libraries and calculates land pattern geometries from component data. Design expertise has been built, through many years of design activity, in BGA (Ball Grid Array), PLCC (Plastic Leaded Chip Carrier), SOIC (Small Outline Integrated Circuit), and PTH (Plated-through Hole) components integration on multi-layer rigid and rigid-semi flex-flex PCBs. Expertise on PCBs design covers advanced engineering practices including blind/buried vias, extensive know-how of laser drilling technology, and design rules for multilayered high frequency laminates (e.g. RT Duroid & FR4). CAM carefully validates the Gerber data and starts the pre-engineering work for Netlist verification, design rule checks, traces widths and/or dielectric spacing. The output is PCB’s manufacturing tooling and drawing.


Mechanical design:

Expertise in the design of plastic, metal castings, sheet metal & machined components and sub-systems. Capability to perform tolerance analysis & mechanism kinematic analysis, linear/non-linear static & dynamic analysis using finite element method, cooling simulation of electronic systems using CFD & heat transfer analysis and finally 2D & 3D design using specialized CAD/CAM/CAE software packages.

Company’s engineering infrastructure includes seven laboratories for Design Development, Qualification and Integration. Each laboratory has different level of classification and access control according to the level of security required for the equipment that resides within it. All laboratories are connected through secure high-speed network lines.


ENGINEERING SPECIALITIES


Major areas of services offered according to customer requirements are:

  • Design and Development of electronic modules according to customer specification
  • System design & integration of complex and sophisticated subsystems
  • Turnkey solutions and integration studies according to customer needs (proven experience in various platforms such as naval vessels, mobile command posts, transportable communication hubs, armed vehicles, etc.)

Engineering studies and measurements are offered in the following areas:

  • Wireless Systems and Data link testing & evaluation
    • Wireless link testing with real time channel emulation up to multimach velocities and jamming scenarios generation
    • Physical layer performance characterization
  • Measurements & Field Test capabilities
    • High precision measurement capabilities on high frequency / digital / analog & power supply electronics performance
    • Extensive expertise & capabilities for land mobile field trials for wireless applications
    • Electroacoustics
    • Electro acoustics lab for microphone sensitivity & headphones performance measurements
    • Proven expertise in acoustic field measurements, Passive & Active noise reduction by laboratory emulation of noisy / harsh environments
  • System engineering studies including e.g. RF Engineering analysis, Co-site RF interference, Electrical power subsystem, Cable management, thermal analysis, etc.

Indicative infrastructure, tools and state of art equipment that our HW engineering team is using:

  • Channel Modeling & Measurements with Electrobit EB-8 real time channel emulator
  • State of the art Signal Analyzers, e.g. R&S FSW43 2Hz-43.5 GHz, Agilent N9020A, 20Hz – 13.6 GHz
  • Vector Signal Generators, MXG N5182A, 100 kHz – 6GHz, R&S SMIQ 06B, PSG E8247C up to 20 GHz, etc.
  • S-parameter Network Analyzers, 8720ES, 50MHz – 20GHz
  • In-house Software Controlled Antenna Measurement System
  • Microwave Office (MWO) by AWR, for High Frequency Circuit simulation.
  • Visual System Simulator (VSS) by AWR, for Complex System Simulation
  • Modelling tools (MathWorks MATLAB/Simulink, C language)
  • DSPs (Texas Instruments Fixed Point DSPs, Code Composer Studio, etc.)
  • FPGAs (Xilinx FPGAs, Mentor’s ModelSim VHDL simulation, Xilinx ISE Foundation SW, Vivado Design Suite)
  • High speed logic analyzers & High bandwidth digital oscilloscopes (e.g. DSO3102A)
  • Electro acoustics lab measurement equipment such as : UPL, Rohde & Schwarz Audio Analyzer, Symphonie, 01dB Real Time Acoustic Analyzer, Head and Torso Acoustic Simulator (Brüel& Kjær), MLSSA (analog / electro acoustics system analyzer), Audio Power Amplifier, Audio signal generator (Brüel& Kjær)
  • Mentor Graphics PADS Professional CAD PCB layout and routing tools
  • SIEMENS NX CAD/CAM/CAE
  • UCAM
  • Auto Cad, Corel-Draw & 3D-Studio Max
  • DEAS MS12
  • UGS NX6 CAD/CAM/CAE