High speed digital interface for radar applications

Testing of modern airborne radar systems requires the automated test equipment (ATE) to interface with complex microprocessor based data and memory intensive line replaceable units (LRUs). Bendix Guidance and Control Systems has, for over twenty years, been testing fire control radars. Bendix recognized that a flexible/reconfigurable test set was required to minimize the development of new interfaces. The authors discuss the development of a test set based on existing, non-proprietary architecture using the VXI bus. The computational power of newly developed array processors produces substantial performance improvements over general purpose computers when performing floating point calculations on arrays of data. Digital signal processing (DSP) techniques, coupled with high performance digital interfaces, provide a highly flexible test set that can verify the performance of digital radar LRUs with minimum equipment. Implementing these techniques into a test set results in a downsized, highly mobile ATE which significantly reduces LRU test times.<>