Innovative Design & Realisation of Compact Power Cable Harnesses for Long Range Radars Operating In Naval Environment

The Multi-Functional Radar requires different types of cables- Power Cable, Control Cable and RF cable. These cables will be connected across multiple radar sub-systems. The number of cables depends on the aperture antenna array size. If the size is large then tens of thousands of radiating elements are required to be catered and correspondingly the number of different cables also increases drastically. Consequently, the challenges of routing and harnessing occurs. These cables if not organized inside the antenna and its subsystems house properly then these may lead to multi problems like increase in weight and cost of radar, fatal accident, maintenance and accessibility of electronics. Moreover, the challenges of routing and harness multiplies manifold in naval platform or an aerial platform. In addition, if these cables are not routed properly, then extra cable length will occur and causes problems in handling, transportation and require a longer time for realization. The challenges increase in a situation where some particular cables have to be routed through a narrow path and routed through the fixed size of holes and ducts. In such condition if the cable diameter and bending radius are not appropriately determined beforehand through design, then these lead to issues during physical laying of the cable. Thus, cable diameter and bending radius have to be well defined and within the specified limits. Therefore, we need to analyze and design the cable harness and subsequently model it from source to destination. In this paper, we present such a novel scheme for the design and realization of cable routing and harnessing of Power cables harnesses which are optimized in terms of cable diameter, bending radius, and other constraints like Low Smoke Zero Halogen (LSZH) compliance, are accurately modeled, realized and meet all criterion for system performance.