System RF Performance Analysis Using PDW on Electronic Warfare Systems

The system validation process is one of the most important stages of Electronic Warfare (EW) systems. Depending on the complexity of the system design and customer requirements, the system validation stage can take half of the project time and budget. To meet the project’s deadline, different approaches are needed to eliminate system faults at the early stage of the project. Electronic support (ES) EW systems include multiple hardware and software components. While hardware components contain a receiver, multiple RF line units, and antennas; software components can be listed as user interface, system control, and threat identification software. In this paper, we propose an approach that splits system tests into two phases: RF strip (combined hardware) system performance and combined software system performance. Main focuses were made on RF strips (combined hardware) system performance and design details of a tool that analyzes system RF requirements based on Pulse Descriptor Words (PDW). Valuable RF characteristics of the system can be tested and verified before fully integrating the system components. These early-stage tests enable flexibility to eliminate RF components’ faults and detection errors of RF signals at the data processing stage. In addition to this, time-critical message flows and data transfer conditions of RF strips are tested before the integration of full system components. In this approach, system software units, such as User Interface, Threat Identification Algorithm Software, System Control, and Data Processing Software are excluded and replaced by software test units. We developed software test units to control the RF strips, check message flows, gather and analyze data such as PDW. Focusing on functionality, three main software components have been developed for controlling systems, data transfer, and data analysis. Controlling system and data transfer blocks are online processes, whereas data analysis is offline. In this project, Microsoft Visual Studio, and IBM Rhapsody are used as development environments; C++ and C# languages are used in programming to design test software units. The proposed pipeline can analyze various RF performance characteristics of the system and facilitates detecting errors at the earlier integration stages. Additionally, test automation provides reliable and fast system validation compared to human operators.