Extensible simulator for waveform diversity testing

Exotic waveforms can be formulated, and assessed, using purpose-written waveform generators and matched receivers. However, more comprehensive testing in an environment similar to operational conditions requires a large investment in coding. Furthermore, even bespoke simulators are usually written for the monostatic case, and have limited facilities to handle multiple transceivers distributed in space and time. These considerations led to the development of FERS, the flexible extensible radar simulator, which has been launched as an Open Source initiative. The simulator can handle an arbitrary number of transmit / receive nodes, targets, all distributed in time and space. Waveforms and signal processing can be added in a simple way through a well defined interface. This paper discusses the needs for such a simulator, its design, the high performance computing aspects and concludes with some examples.