An Effective Approach to Evaluating Electronic Warfare Systems

Dominating the electromagnetic spectrum is a vital part of modern military operations. Electronic warfare (EW) plays a crucial role in this by denying an adversary's use of the spectrum for target location and intelligence gathering. There is a growing need for EW systems to jam transmissions more consistently, with innovative techniques to successfully prevent or deceive the threat. However, modern radar systems can detect irregularities in programmed electronic attack (EA) techniques. Ensuring that EW systems can produce these techniques without exploitable irregularities demands thorough and accurate EW tests and evaluation methods. Existing methods for waveform evaluation of EW responses can be costly in both time and resources. Further, complex EA techniques require evaluation at a high resolution and fidelity that cannot be easily achieved with common laboratory tools due to tradeoffs between bandwidth and resolution. With high-performance hardware and advanced digital signal processing (DSP), engineers can digitize and process large bandwidths of congested and noisy environments. Implementation of these techniques will help secure electromagnetic dominance and save the lives of countless warfighters. This paper will discuss methods and applications of advanced waveform analysis that enable quick and accurate characterization of critical parameters of advanced EW systems with the needed resolution for proper evaluation.