Microwave Engineering Europe - October 2008 - (Page 40)

40 SYNTHETIC TEST Selecting the synthetic test environment for transmit-receive (T-R) modules in a phased array radar system By Dr. Francesco Lupinetti, CTO, Aeroﬂex Test Solutions, www.aeroﬂex.com D uring the last few years test engineers have seen a steadily increasing stream of information concerning synthetic test. The history and meaning of this term as well as a number of claims about its advantages have been made in a variety of articles. If you are a test engineer or test engineering manager who has experience with high volume commercial and perhaps cPCI/PXI-based test system architectures, you probably associate synthetic test with virtual instruments. If you are in the militaryaerospace (mil-aero) market and have been involved with various government contracts, you probably identify synthetic test with NxTest and ARGCS (Agile Reconﬁgurable Global Combat Support). In all cases, it is difﬁcult to ﬁnd an example that takes into consideration the most practical aspects of evaluating and selecting a microwave synthetic test environment for a test application characterized by high-volume requirements as well as high-measurement performance requirements. This article will describe the selection process that leads a customer to choose a synthetic implementation for testing transmit-receive (T-R) modules utilized in a phased array radar system. Background Compared to virtually any commercial segment, mil-aero testing does not traditionally deal with high-volume requirements over a relatively short period of time. Consider the case where a mil-aero company successfully breaks into the business of building T-R modules for phased-array radars. When this happens, the company in question typically moves from building one or a few units-per-radar to building hundreds or even thousands of units-perradar, depending upon the radar application. Imagine being the test engineer working with a team of mixed-signal microwave component engineers who have spent the last few years designing and prototyping T-R modules. After multiple proposals, uncounted number of meetings, numerous design changes and the accumulation of literally thousands of hours of test data on a few prototypes, the engineering team has won the business of building several tens to hundreds of radars — each requiring at least two orders of magnitude more modules than the total number of prototypes built to-date. In fact, the ﬁrst manufacturing contract (block or tranche) may very well take about the same time to complete as the entire development period. And don’t forget about the added requirement of needing to build and test extremely well-matched and highperformance T-R modules to the tune of a thousand-times the number built during the engineering development and proposal stage. The ﬁrst production test plans are drawn and an analysis is made to correctly size and select the type of test equipment and number of stations needed to meet the production requirements. In support of the analysis, test time benchmarks are derived based upon the engineering test experience with prototypes. At the end of this process, the ﬁndings indicate that each module will require about four hours of test time, if the same approach that has been utilized during the engineering development phase is also applied to production. Considering the quantity of modules to be tested and the length of the contract, what are the ﬁnancial and schedule impacts that these ﬁndings could have and what can be done to ﬁnd a realistic, yet proﬁtable solution? The Device Under Test (DUT) Before answering the question above, let’s ﬁnd out a bit more about the DUT. A T-R module is basically a miniature transmitter-receiver (transceiver) that needs to amplify and transmit phase- and amplitude-controlled wideband pulsed signals as well as to receive them. The transmitreceive function requires fast switching and high isolation. All stages, especially the input/ output ports, have to be very well matched over the entire frequency band of operation. The T-R circuitry needs to be as efﬁcient as possible (especially on the transmitter side) to reduce the power requirement as well as to generate as little heat as possible within the smallest possible form factor. This is very important, because a certain number of modules will have to ﬁt in a relatively small space. Heat and reliability (besides continuous and consistent performance) become a primary concern. Other parameters, Figure 1: SMART^E 5100 transmit-receive module test environment. Microwave Engineering Europe ● October 2008 ● www.mwee.com 040-041-042-043_MWEE.indd 40 3/10/08 15:45:20 http://www.aeroflex.com http://www.mwee.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Microwave Engineering Europe - October 2008

Microwave Engineering Europe - October 2008 Contents Comment News Cover Feature: AWR's AXIEM Software Brings 3D Planar Electromagnetic (EM) Simulation "Up Front" RFID: Augmented Reality: Beyond RFID and QR Codes for Mobile Phone Platforms Filters & Frequency Synthesis ZigBee Goes Green with Support for Smart Energy Simplify Mobile Data Applications and Services Test Enabling the State-of-the-Art in Automatic Test Equipment National Physical Laboratory Test Facility Aids Development of Next-Generation Antennas Selecting the Synthetic Test Environment for Transmit-Receive (T-R) Modules in a Phased Array Radar System Products Calendar

Microwave Engineering Europe - October 2008

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.