Category: News

Posted on by

CAES and Colorado Engineering Inc. Form Strategic Alliance for Advanced Technology Development

CAES, the leading provider of mission critical electronic solutions, and Colorado Engineering Inc. (CEI) have formed a strategic alliance to jointly develop advanced technology applicable to missile seekers, datalinks, electronic warfare systems, and next generation radar and communications systems. The alliance allows for the CAES and CEI engineering teams to agilely collaborate on critical projects for aerospace and defense customers. Aerospace and defense prime contractors and the government will benefit from the team’s newly combined, advanced systems engineering and volume manufacturing expertise, combining both digital and analog functionality, allowing for more effective engagements earlier in the life cycle of a program.

We are delighted to partner with CEI to combine our industry-leading digital, RF, microwave, and millimeter wave expertise with CEI’s systems engineering capability,” said David Young, Chief Technology Officer, CAES. “Customers have looked to us to provide integrated solutions with advanced capabilities in missiles, radar, and electronic warfare domains. Teaming with CEI and its world class systems engineers creates the team of choice for defense primes.”

“Allying ourselves with CAES enables CEI with access to leading millimeter wave technologists and robust manufacturing capability,” said Nancy Scally, CEI Chief Executive Officer. “Our customer-first culture, combined with innovative approaches and an experienced engineering team, and CAES’ advanced engineering capability provide customers with a synergistic team to solve their most challenging problems.”

The CAES/CEI strategic alliance, focused on both aerospace and defense customers, grants both companies access to the other’s engineering, prototyping, and manufacturing capabilities on a quick-reaction basis. CAES and CEI can seamlessly assemble a team of engineers ready to develop advanced technology solutions based on customer’s mission needs.

About CAES

CAES is a pioneer of advanced electronics for the most technologically challenging military and aerospace trusted systems. As the largest provider of mixed-signal and radiation-hardened technology to the United States aerospace and defense industry, CAES delivers high-reliability RF, microwave and millimeter wave, microelectronic and digital solutions that enable our customers to ensure a safer, more secure planet. On land, at sea, in the air, in space and in cyberspace, CAES’ extensive electronics and enhanced manufacturing capabilities are at the forefront of mission-critical military and aerospace innovation. Caes.com

About Colorado Engineering Inc. (CEI)

CEI is a small, woman-owned business headquartered in Colorado Springs. It is one of the world’s foremost leading radio frequency (RF) and high-performance computing (HPC) solutions providers offering bleeding-edge technology solutions for the commercial, industrial, automotive, and military industries. CEI supplies off-the-shelf solutions for hardware and software as well as custom-tailored solutions for any application. CEI offers quick turn, innovative solutions, allowing for lower costs, and high-quality designs. ColoradoEngineering.com

Posted on by

Colorado Engineering’s Advanced Radar Architecture Improves Defense Programs

Colorado Engineering Inc. (CEI) has experienced many successes since its inception in 2003, including its heavy involvement in the Department of Defense’s (DoD) Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program. The SBIR program is highly competitive and encourages domestic small businesses to engage in Federal Research/Research and Development (R/R&D) that has the potential for commercialization.  The program also enables small businesses to explore their technological potential and provides the incentive to profit from its commercialization. CEI was recognized for its outstanding SBIR efforts in 2011 with the Tibbetts Award. This prestigious acclaim recognizes companies, organizations, and individuals that exemplify the very best in SBIR achievements.

Colorado Engineering’s SBIR successes have led to expanded opportunity for the company as well as increased effectiveness and cost efficiency for defense programs. “We have made the SBIR program a cornerstone of our business development,” said Colorado Engineering CEO Nancy Scally. “Before participating in the SBIR program, we had started with just two people. Today, thanks to projects like Radar Advanced Receiver/Exciter (RARE) and our many SBIR successes, we’ve expanded our staff and have seen revenues grow year after year.”

Under the SBIR program, CEI developed a ground-breaking, computing architecture that enabled the creation of a sense-and-avoid (SAA) radar design capable of fitting on an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV ). This technology breakthrough became a solution for a variety of military and commercial radar applications, and the backbone for an extensive CEI product line. Learn more about CEI’s involvement in the SBIR program.

RARE architecture provides a modular hardware solution that can be more precisely scaled by stacking or tiling together individual computing sub-components and arranging them like building blocks without the need for a back plane. Sub-component combinations can be customized to meet specific computing requirements. Additionally, the design allows for the overall end-state functionality to be defined (and changed) through software changes in the architecture. This flexibility meets the needs for data processing speed as well as size, weight, and power constraints in radar system designs for UAVs.

Development of the RARE architecture first started under a 2006 SBIR contract from the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) seeking more affordable and flexible systems for ground-based radar for ballistic missile defense. CEI completed development of the foundational technology under a 2010 U.S. Air Force SBIR contract focused on development of an on board SAA sensor suite, including an air-to-air radar. The technology has since been explored for a variety of military and civilian applications.The U. S. Air Force and U. S. Navy have both pursued the RARE architecture as the core technology for an all-weather autonomous radar SAA capability to the U.S. Air Force Global Hawk and U.S. Navy Triton long-range surveillance UAVs. There is also interest in the technology from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection under the Department of Homeland Security.

MDA is a research, development, and acquisition agency within the Department of Defense. Its workforce includes government civilians, military service members, and contractor personnel in multiple locations across the United States. It is focused on retaining and recruiting a dedicated workforce interested in supporting U.S. national security.

CEI is a small, woman-owned business headquartered in Colorado Springs. It is one of the world’s foremost leading radio frequency (RF) and high-performance computing (HPC) solutions providers offering bleeding-edge technology solutions for the commercial, industrial, automotive, and military industries. CEI supplies off-the-shelf solutions for hardware and software as well as custom-tailored solutions for any application. CEI offers quick turn, innovative solutions, allowing for lower costs, and high-quality designs.

Posted on by

Colorado Engineering is Proud Design Partner of Analog Devices, Inc.

The iScan Omega 1 is CEI’s latest and greatest antenna module to take your next radar design to market quickly. Equipped with Analog Devices Inc.’s ADF5901 Tx and ADF5904 Rx downconverter, iScan Omega 1 has plenty of processing power to support a plethora of advanced Digital Signal Processing (DSP) algorithms. The built-in patch antenna has a fixed beam with a FoV of ± 36.5° azimuth and ± 8° elevation. Other features include a reference frequency of 100 MHz, reference sampling capabilities, and a PLL chip. The iScan Omega 1 can be the gateway to your next radar design.

CEI’s iScan Radar Series brings high frequency radar technology to small form factor platforms. Utilizing a modular architecture, iScan processor, expansion, and antenna modules can be mixed and matched to create a customized development platform. The Radar Series features rapid prototype development with customizable optimizations to meet customer specific application requirements. The Series includes 24, 60, and 77 GHz options, and is the perfect solution to significantly decrease cost and time-to-market.

CEI is one of the world’s foremost leading RF and HPC solutions providers offering bleeding-edge technology solutions since 2003 for the commercial, industrial, automotive, and military industries. CEI supplies off the shelf solutions for hardware and software as well as custom-tailored solutions for any application. CEI offers quick turn, innovative solutions, allowing for lower costs, and high-quality designs.

From extensive experience designing and producing cutting-edge RF technology, CEI provides expertise in leading-edge efforts in MOSA applications, reconfigurable RF, THz EM propagation modeling, and associated remote sensing system development. CEI’s facilities are outfitted with sensitive electronics rework stations, an RF anechoic chamber, and test equipment for analysis and troubleshooting frequencies up to 170 GHz. From board layout for innovative automotive radar to software-defined radios to complex, fully integrated radar defense systems, CEI provides a wide range of RF capabilities.

Analog Devices (Nasdaq: ADI) is a leading global high-performance analog technology company dedicated to solving the toughest engineering challenges. They enable their customers to interpret the world around them by intelligently bridging the physical and digital with unmatched technologies that sense, measure, power, connect and interpret. Visit http://www.analog.com to learn more.

Posted on by

Colorado Engineering using Intel Agilex FPGA in PCIE Development Platform

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Colorado Engineering Inc. (CEI) is one of just a few select companies using samples of the just-released Intel® Agilex™ FPGA in its lower-cost PCIE development platform. CEI also plans to develop appropriate host drivers, specific algorithms, and other associated IP for the board to create a turnkey development platform for  designs based on the Agilex.

Intel Agilex FPGAs provide the flexibility and agility required to meet the challenges of a data-centric, 5G-fueled era by delivering significant gains in performance and inherent low latency. Reconfigurable and with reduced power consumption, Agilex FPGAs have computation and high-speed interfacing capabilities that enable the creation of smarter, higher bandwidth networks and help deliver real-time actionable insights via accelerated artificial intelligence (AI) and other analytics performed at the edge, in the cloud and throughout the network.

CEI’s mixed-signal processing board – the Peregrine II Digital Receiver/Exciter (DREX) – targets 5G SDR applications. Peregrine II incorporates five Intel Stratix® 10 GX FPGAs and an Intel Core i7™ processor mounted on a single-board computer (SBC) module that plugs into a COM Express site on the board. Learn more about the Peregrine II development platform or the upcoming development platform based on the Agilex Stratix 10 FPGAs.

CEI created more than 50 FPGA-based designs for a variety of clients, including Intel and Altera. The small, woman-owned, Colorado-based business has experience in FPGA-based design dating back to the 1980s. Early on, CEI primarily served the military and aerospace sectors, but has since expanded to other markets such as computing and storage, test and measurement, software-defined radio (SDR), and 5G fronthaul applications. CEI specializes in analog or digital applications requiring high-speed, high-performance processing, and turnkey design solutions. CEI is a platinum member of the Intel Design Solutions Network and has several other key industry partnerships. Visit ColoradoEngineering.com to learn more.

Intel (NASDAQ: INTC), a leader in the semiconductor industry, is shaping the data-centric future with computing and communications technology that is the foundation of the world’s innovations. The company’s engineering expertise is helping address the world’s greatest challenges as well as helping secure, power and connect billions of devices and the infrastructure of the smart, connected world – from the cloud to the network to the edge and everything in between. Find more information about Intel at newsroom.intel.com and intel.com.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Posted on by

Colorado Engineering Exploring Robot Self Awareness

Dr. James Crowder, resident artificial intelligence (AI) expert and Colorado Engineering Inc. (CEI) Systems Fellow, is exploring how AI robots develop self-awareness and personal preferences. Crowder’s 23-year-old AI creation named Maxwell developed an affinity for jazz and sunny-side-up eggs. Why jazz and why sunny-side-up? These are the questions Crowder and his daughter, Shelli Friess, a cognitive psychologist, are trying to answer through their research.

The pair have co-authored several books based on these concepts. Even though the fields of AI and psychology are typically opposed, according to Friess, the pair decided to collaborate instead. Their research includes what happens in a human brain at an unconscious level while sleeping to learn more about how machines “think” and develop preferences.

The addition of Dr. Crowder to CEI brings a new level of expertise, combining CEI’s high-performance computing and design expertise with Dr. Crowder’s extensive machine learning, and cognitive systems design experience.  This allows CEI to provide rapid development and deployment of machine learning and artificial intelligence systems to customers, along with the computational horsepower required for government and commercial applications.

Crowder and Friess were recently interviewed on the subject of AI by Scienceline, a student-run online magazine published by the Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program (SHERP) in the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at New York University. Read the Scienceline article. Crowder and Friess were also recently interviewed by The Consciousness Podcast, a weekly show featuring complex ideas from the world’s experts to “regular” folks interested in amazing minds. Download the podcast.

Founded in 2003 with engineering and production facilities located in Colorado Springs, Colorado, CEI supplies Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) high performance computing hardware and software, as well as tailored solutions, working directly with government agencies and for commercial prime contractors, offering quick turn, innovative solutions with lower cost and higher quality while minimizing risk. CEI leads or partners on new radar systems, software and hardware projects, including leading edge efforts in MOSA applications, reconfigurable RF, THz EM propagation modeling, and associated remote sensing system development. CEI is certified as a women’s business enterprise by the Women’s Business Enterprise National Council (WBENC), the nation’s largest third-party certifier of the businesses owned and operated by women in the U.S. It is also a Platinum Member of Intel’s FPGA Design Solutions Network.