Partners presentation - SELEX Elsag

Company profile

SELEX Elsag, a Finmeccanica company, is a Communications systems supplier for military and civil customers. Uniquely placed to lead the delivery of Network Centric Communications, the Company capabilities encompass solutions for joint, land, sea and air applications, secure and mission critical communications.
Leader in advanced technology with over 100 years of experience, when the inventor of the radio and Nobel Prize winner, Guglielmo Marconi, established the Wireless Telegraph and Signal Company in Chelmsford-UK and the Officine Marconi in Genoa- Italy. SELEX Elsag develops state-of-the-art communications solutions meeting customer requirements and exceeding their expectations.
SELEX Elsag employs more than 5000 people worldwide, with offices and plants in Italy, the UK, USA, Germany, Turkey, Romania and South America. The Company's main business sectors involvedesign, production and supply of:

• Security systems and equipment to be used in civil and military communication networks
• Land, naval and satellite communication systems and equipment, command and control systems, and integrated networks for land, naval and satellite defense for national security institutions and other governmental entities.
• Avionics equipment and integrated systems for communication, navigation,
• Identification and mission control;
• Government and Civil Communications for Professional and Telecom Operators where system has been implemented for fire departments, municipal police, harbors, civil defence, Italian highways, costguard and railways networks.

The characteristics of these products and the advanced technologies that are used in their production also allow their application and marketing in sectors other than defence, in which security and reliability are also fundamental requirements.
Selex Elsag research team, with over 1200 highly skilled engineers working in its Research and Development laboratories.

Motivation

The functionality of the military communication systems are becoming even more SW programmable in order to face the growing needs of adaptability to internationally co-ordinated missions and interoperability scenarios. This is especially evident within Software Defined Radios.
To meet this demand, new technologies and methodologies must be explored for implementation of subsystem components that have traditionally been implemented in discrete logic and ASIC technology. This also includes cryptographic components targeted for application in equipment meeting high grade standards.
Necessary flexibility and re-configurability needed in future secure communication equipment can be achieved through exploitation of reprogrammable FPGA technology. The flexibility and re-configurability of this technology is directly in contradiction with the extreme requirements for function integrity and function separation that high grade standard's introduce. A comprehensive analysis of the actual vulnerabilities of EDA SoCutilising reprogrammable FPGA and the establishment of countermeasures must be performed. This includes all aspects of the technology throughout the life-cycle of the equipment that implements it. Trust and assurance in development tools and production equipment must be established, as well as guidelines for correct segmentation of functional blocks