Patent ID: 8063838

Claim:
A submarine mast antenna control system for controlling a plurality of functions performed by an antenna system, on a submarine comprising: a mast function control circuit that receives a plurality of indicator signals from the antenna system and assigns a control function to each signal to control an antenna system function; a mast indicator read back circuit that is further divided into a digital read back circuit that reads back digital indicators on a plurality of indicator lines originating from the antenna system and an analog read back circuit that reads back analog indicators on a plurality of indicator lines originating from the antenna system, wherein the indicator lines coming from the antenna system are electrically isolated from the submarine's electrical ground for the purpose of preventing electromagnetic interference by means of a plurality of isolator circuits in an optical isolation network comprised of a plurality of photo emitting and photo-detector integrated circuits; a VXI interface that handles the analog and digital read back signals as well as indicator signals from the antenna system in accordance with VXI and includes an assembly that implements all of the necessary interface and protocol functions in order to create a VXI register based device; and a computer terminal joined to the VXI interface across a VXI bus using a VXI protocol that receives as inputs from the VXI interface a plurality of TTL logic control and indicator lines that contain the control and indicator signals from the mast function control circuit and the mast read back circuit, wherein the control and indicator signals are passed to the computer terminal where a user interface gives access to all of the control functions and indicators to a user.