Innovation at Crossfield means discovering a radical new way to solve an old problem or to apply existing technology to address a new opportunity. The innovation may encompass a new algorithm, a novel microelectronics technique, a high-speed network, embedded software, or an ultra-low-power wireless sensor. All of the techniques are examples of technologies that can dramatically impact the size, performance, power consumption and mobility of a product.
Instrumentation
Crossfield develops wireless and low-speed wired instrumentation platforms for harsh environment sensor data acquisition. These platforms capture the output of strain, temperature, acceleration, pressure, and other types sensors through a precision analog-to-digital converter and store the data in non-volatile memory. The data is either logged or transmitted in real-time to a remote location for further analysis. In the Ethernet based platforms, Crossfield supports Power-over-Ethernet such that data transfer, precision timing, and power are all transmitted down a single cable. Also, Crossfield recently developed an IEEE 802.15.4a RFIC that provides a standard IEEE 802.15.4 interface across a ultrawideband (UWB) physical layer. All of these instrumentation platforms can be controlled through National Instruments LabVIEW.
Crossfield provides novel communication architectures for heterogeneous high performance computing (HPC) clusters with hardware-in-the-loop. Our patented Multipath RDMA technology provides greatly increased bandwidth between computing nodes within HPC clusters while our high-speed network instrumentation provides high bandwidth data transfer into and out of clusters. The HPC systems and network instrumentation use Real-Time Operating Systems (RTOS), IEEE 1588 Precision Time Protocol (PTP), and the Open Fabrics Enterprise Distribution (OFED) to support precision event scheduling and synchronization along with a standardized software development platform throughout the entire system.
Microelectronics
