The SOSA architecture, explained
Sensor Open Systems Architecture: The Open Group technical standard that selects OpenVPX profiles — and more — for defense sensor systems. Here you find the mandate, the relationship with VPX and the aligned modules in the catalog.
What SOSA is: when openness becomes a requirement
SOSA is the technical standard of The Open Group's SOSA Consortium for military sensor systems: radar, electronic warfare, communications, electro-optics — built on open rather than proprietary architectures.
The push is MOSA — the Modular Open Systems Approach — which the US Department of Defense made a procurement requirement with the 2019 tri-service memorandum: programs must use modular open architectures wherever possible. SOSA translates the mandate into engineering: on hardware it selects and constrains OpenVPX (VITA 65) profiles for 3U and 6U boards, chassis and power supplies, so modules from different suppliers are genuinely interchangeable.
The standard's first edition dates to 2021. On the market, conformance is declared as "SOSA aligned": it is the formula under which the most recent OpenVPX single board computers, GPGPUs and switches arrive in the catalog. For European programs, alignment is an insurance policy: multi-vendor spares and technology refreshes without redesigning the system.
The service: custom platforms and microracks How the engineering team works
What the specification says
The three layers, item by item
The political mandate, the technical standard, the VITA base.3 entries
MOSA
Modular Open Systems Approach
The approach the DoD imposes on acquisition programs: modular, open interfaces to break vendor lock-in, speed up upgrades and reuse modules across platforms.
SOSA Technical Standard
The Open Group · 1.0 (2021)
The standard defining sensor system architecture: hardware modules, software interfaces and electro-mechanical rules. On hardware it does not invent: it selects a subset of OpenVPX profiles and constrains them, reducing the variants that fragmented the VPX ecosystem.
VITA 65
The OpenVPX base
Backplanes, pipes and module types remain OpenVPX's: a SOSA-aligned module is first of all a well-behaved VPX module. The VPX guide explains the vocabulary.
The SOSA catalog starts here
SOSA-aligned boards
Where SOSA works
The sensor systems of defense programs, on every platform.
Nearby architectures
The VPX base and the aligned ecosystem's pieces.
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