[Solution Sharing] Test System, Counter Threats - Transmitter Simulation in Radar Warning Receiver Testing

Testing radar warning receivers in real-world scenarios is the most important part of ensuring their reliable performance. For example, radar warning receivers, which are important units for self-protection of airborne electronic countermeasures, must be tested before they are integrated into aircraft and put into operation. Traditionally, we have used dedicated custom equipment for these tests. With the increase in processing power and available bandwidth of commercial vector signal sources (such as the R&S SMW200A), the use of general-purpose instruments has become a good choice. Thanks to its top RF performance, engineers can use signal sources to complete simulations of different application cases, from simple vector signal generation to high-end radar simulation. This reduces costs and increases application flexibility.

With the R&S SMW200A, the desired RF environment can be simulated. Very long-duration scenarios can be simulated by transmitting a pulse description word (PDW) stream to the R&S SMW200A via LAN, during which the R&S SMW200A is used as a frequency-agile RF signal source. It supports the generation of typical unmodulated radar pulses, Barker-coded pulses, frequency modulated continuous waves (FMCW), or any intra-pulse IQ modulation to simulate modern low-rate-of-interception radars. The R&S SMW200A supports PDW rates of up to 12 MPDW/s.

At every stage of development, from initial functional testing to final system operation simulation testing, engineers need realistic test cases to simulate the signals received by the radar warning receiver in real operation. To this end, engineers can use the R&S Pulse Sequencer software package to define radar application scenarios from simple pulses to dense multi-transmitter RF environments. The package can use intelligent pulse interleaving algorithms with optimized, custom priorities and minimum packet loss as standard features. Alternatively, users can simulate pulse superposition scenarios without losing any pulses. Users can configure various typical radar application scenarios, such as continuous wave radar, frequency modulated continuous wave (FMCW) radar or pulse radar (such as frequency-agile radar with large bandwidth and complex inter-pulse and intra-pulse modulation). In order to simulate real scenarios as much as possible, transmitters and receivers can simulate six-degree-of-freedom movements along predefined or imported trajectories to make the simulation effect as close to reality as possible. Based on this requirement, ease of use is the core requirement of this editing software. Therefore, the software provides 3D preview and graphical real-time visualization of the configured scenario to enable users to get started quickly. Furthermore, even complex multi-emitter scenarios can be calculated quickly, minimizing waiting times and allowing users to optimize test cases.

The R&S SMW200A hardware supports all typical radar frequency bands up to 44 GHz. Engineers can interconnect multiple dual-channel R&S SMW200A vector signal source local oscillators to simulate the angle of arrival (AOA) of radar signals. Multiple instruments with interconnected local oscillators enable the testing of direction-finding equipment using arrival time difference, interferometry or amplitude comparison techniques with a small footprint. The R&S SMW200A internal digital hardware supports up to 2 GHz of internal I/Q bandwidth. The flexibility of this digital hardware ensures pulse superposition simulation of up to six overlapping pulses on a single RF port of a single instrument, with a pulse density of up to 3.3M pulses/second.