Radar signal generation for multi emitter environments for meaningful receiver tests

This paper proposes a new and innovative solution for radar signal generation in multi emitter environments. Traditionally, people use regular RF and microwave signal generators to stimulate radar warning receivers in order to measure the analog RF performance. Many different test cases allow to validate every single parameter. Yet, once test cases with more realistic signals become necessary for operational testing towards the end of the development cycle, it is quite a complex task to generate meaningful signals to stimulate the receiver in order to fully evaluate its performance. Dedicated test systems are available on the market and are traditionally used for these tasks, but they suffer from several technical drawbacks beyond the cost factor. These systems cannot generate continuous signals together with pulsed signals simultaneously as they normally use a fast hopping synthesizer concept. This paper introduces a novel solution which allows to generate complex RF signals for real world simulation scenarios based on commercially available PC software and vector signal generator hardware.