SIMULATED REALTIME MULTI-CHANNEL IQ DATA GENERATOR FOR AN AESA RADAR

Modern airborne radar systems require a complex digital processing for target detection and tracking. An increasing challenge on testing is required to validate these algorithms before flight trials. Hence the need for a development rig, capable of simulating the sensor in a realistic and dynamic environment. The research highlights potentialities of "HW in the loop" for the radar simulation, describing a simulated real-time multi-channel IQ data generator to be used by AESA radar manufacturer to test critical modes in the radar RIG. The system provides at runtime the IQ data for the 4 complex channels, with different PRFs scheduling, in A/A modes. The sensitive point of the work is the matching of realtime performance requirements w.r.t. band requirements. In fact, the IQ generator should guarantee an output bit-rate of 400 Mbytes/sec, scheduling its processing, triggered by an external sync signal, at 400 Hz, with reaction times of fractions of ms.