NATO Generic Vehicle Architecture (NGVA)

NGVA is a NATO Standardisation Agreement (STANAG 4754), based on open standards to integrate military systems and to exchange data among vehicle subsystems [84]. The NGVA standard is built upon the DDS infrastructure (read more in section ) and it adopts the data distribution protocol to interoperably exchange information amongst the various subsystems.

The usage of NGVA makes military system integration less risky and more compatible, and it is cheaper as well to integrate subsystems on military platforms that are following the same standards. The NATO standard opens up an opportunity for new markets, such as smaller companies that are developing military systems and equipment. Since all sub-systems are following the same open standard, there should be less risk when performing maintenance and updates in the future, as the subsystems are capable of cooperating more competently with less risk of breaking the system due to divergent infrastructures.

Integration of NGVA

The process of integrating the remote firing system into a NGVA-based infrastructure consists of several steps of compatibility checks. These steps are necessary in order to verify that the system in development is compatible and operable with the military platform, so that these subsystems can interact and exchange data.

Figure 42: NGVA integration compatibility levels [43]

1. Connectivity compatibility: This is the top-level compatibility check, which ensures that the system in development can be physically integrated into the military plat-form without needing to modify the existing infrastructure. This means that both the hardware and software must be supported on the target platform in order to successfully perform an integration.

2. Communication compatibility: This next level ensures that the system data model is properly implemented based on the NGVA standard, such as various topic types, video streaming standards or messaging types among the subsystems of the military platform. This is necessary to ensure that all messages that are being sent or received by any subsystem can be fetched and understood by other subsystems.

3. Functional compatibility: The last compatibility level ensures that the subsystems are functioning properly in terms of functional and performance requirements. Even though it is possible to exchange data among the subsystems, each subsystem should be able to operate separately as intended, since the integration must not have a negative impact on the existing infrastructure in terms of functional capabilities.

If these three compatibility levels are met and there is no particular issue otherwise, then it is safe to consider that the remote firing system is capable of being integrated into a military platform following the NGVA standard.

There is a practical example shown in Figure 43 with the illustration of the remote firing system integrated into a military land vehicle. The subsystems of a NGVA-based platform are network nodes that are acting as peers to the NGVA infrastructure, allowing the nodes to establish a peer-to-peer relationship within the network.

There is, however, a gateway present in-between each node and the NGVA data network, which is required to map and route the data throughout the infrastructure. The RFS mobile application and receiver (marked in red) are exchanging messages through the data network, alongside other military subsystems deployed onto the military vehicle, as well as some off-vehicle grounded subsystems.

Figure 43: RFS integrated into a NGVA data network

The data that is exchanged between these nodes are packed as DDS messages, where some nodes are publishing information to a specific topic, and some nodes are subscribing to these given topics in order to fetch the data. This is the publish-subscribe pattern that the DDS infrastructure is built upon, which is the main approach for exchanging data amongst nodes of the NGVA data network.

Digging deeper into the publish-subscribe pattern, each node within the network can both publish and subscribe to messaging topics, such as shown in Figure 45. In this example there are two nodes connected to the data network, ”C2IS Application” and ”Android Mobile Application”. The latter would be the mobile application used to communicate with the receiver of the remote firing system.

Figure 45: Publish-subscribe pattern amongst two nodes

There are numerous data topics in this example, such as camera video feed, mission data, waypoint data, and so on. These topics are used to exchange information amongst the two nodes above, such as for example special forces operator data that is being shared from the C2IS to the mobile application (C2IS is publishing data to the topic, and the mobile application is subscribing to this specific topic in order to fetch operator data).

Likewise, the Android mobile application is publishing waypoint data of deployed receivers to the C2IS application through a specific topic, in order to inform and update the other

This is a pure peer-to-peer communication channel amongst the nodes within the network, and this infrastructure does not rely upon a centralized server or any cloud solution to transmit the data back and forth.

By following this data model and infrastructure, it is possible to integrate practically any subsystem into an existing military platform, which again opens up a large number of opportunities to improve the combat proficiency within military systems.