A Paradigm Shift in Exhaustive BIT Information and BIT Collection Mechanism over IP network for large Active Array Antenna

Periodic checking of health status for any system or sub-system is of paramount importance in Active Array Aperture Antennas. This is accomplished by reporting and presenting to the user the Built-In Test (BIT) information. But till date the amount of information that is presented as BIT is modest and insufficient for exhaustive analysis and troubleshooting. In this paper we present a novel scheme of exhaustive BIT collection for a system. Apart from the traditional Central BIT or CBIT, the collection of Power-On BIT or PBIT and Initiated BIT or IBIT presents a comprehensive picture of Active Array Antenna Unit (AAAU) at any instant. Since the Line Replaceable Units (LRUs) are over Ethernet Internet Protocol (IP) network, hence the properties of IP network are thoroughly used to advantage for BIT collection Secondly, given that the number of LRUs are in tens of thousands, hence it becomes necessary to sequence the BIT collection mechanism with respect to time and at the same time sufficient care must be taken to the fact that the BIT collection time should be kept as minimal as possible. We address all these challenges in our current design of BIT collection. The architecture is scalable and can be easily adapted to large aperture arrays.