FMV Moves Ahead With ASTERIX Tools

KARLSRUHE, GERMANY, April 2008 The Swedish Defence Materiel Administration (FMV) has ordered eight compact versions of RAPS-3, following the upgrade of their first RAPS II to its powerful successor in 2007, and meeting the growing need of the users for an advanced and versatile test tool in their surveillance environment.

In 1998 FMV was among the first customers to acquire the ASTERIX test and evaluation tool RAPS-II. The system's manifold advantages and distinct functionalities convinced FMV to invest in additional systems, which have been deployed to seven sites across the country.

Two civil clients, the Swedish Air Navigation Service Provider LVF and the company Saab, also belong to COMSOFTs early RAPS user group. Main application area and central interest of all Swedish customers is analysis and visualisation of conventional radar data in ASTERIX and F200 format, as well as ADS-B and Mode-S data. In the past the existing RAPS systems have also been successfully used during the setting up of SENDNET, the Swedish Surveillance Network which was worldwide the first to use a fully IP based underlying communication infrastructure for the transmission of realtime and mission critical radar data.

SENDNET is based on a special version of RMCDS (Radar Message Conversion and Distribution System) a sister product of RMCDE, one of the flagship products of COMSOFT.

For the first time EUROCONTROLs performance assessing software SASS-C (Surveillance Analysis Support System for ATC Centre) runs on the same platform as COMSOFTs RAPS-3, both tools accessing and processing the same data sources and harmonically complementing each another.