An approach to data recording and management in airborne radar

Modern radar system has multimode and mutlifunction capability with sophisticated signal processing algorithms for different operational scenarios. Development of these signal processing algorithms, performance enhancement and adaptation based on field results requires in depth analysis of baseband data collected during radar operation. Towards this data recording and management plays a vital role. The design of such system for radar shall support H/W and S/W features for real time recording, playback and off line extraction of whole or selective portion of radar baseband data. It shall also support long term data storage and retrieval. Although data recording requirement is same for different radar applications but constraints for size, weight and power is additional and critical for airborne radars. Hence, more emphasis is given for data recording and management for airborne radar. The requirement capturing, design and evaluation of data recorder for airborne radar along with data management philosophy is brought out as three layer approach in this paper.