Eastern OptX launched a Dopper Radar Testing Program to recreate the actual environment in which radar must operate. Field-testing can require the coordination of a variety of costly assets and platforms including aircraft, ships, and vehicles, which can delay projects for a long periods of time. Now an alternate approach to this testing problem is here, with the recreation of the actual environment in which the radar system must operate.
Channel Environment Replicator 3000
An alternative approach to the testing problem is to recreate the actual environment in which the radar will operate. This recreation, called the Channel Environment Replicator (CER) 3000, includes all the features of simulation, modeling software, and field testing of other systems, and accepts any radar system characteristic variation including operating frequency, frequency agility, pulsed or continuous wave (CW), encryption, and power level.
CER 3000 systems have propagation delay and loss associated with a desired target along with multiple target reflections. The CER 3000 has radar cross-section and target velocity, if any. For a moving target, the CER 3000 will vary the target position (distance from the radar to the target) and produce the frequency shift (Doppler frequency) associated with the target velocity.
An effective method for reproducing the target propagation delay and loss is the optical fiber CER 3000. The Eastern OptX CER system can vary both the target distance and signal level for a given radar cross-section. It can also create multiple signal paths to replicate clutter and mult-path. The final component of the CER is the Dopper frequency generation associated with target velocity. A signal modulator is a broadband approach to Doppler generation, while these systems normally operate over octave bandwidths, they may be extended with only minor performance degradation.
The moving target generator covers radar frequencies from 1-18 GHz. These compact systems provide target generation with Doppler frequencies from 0 to +/- 12 kHz and allow the user to set target and radio target speeds and direction including opening, closing, and lateral motion.
All Eastern OptX Series 5000 Doppler Generators may be used together with the Eastern OptX Series 3000 CER Delay Lines to create both Doppler and step-wise target and source movements along with propagation loss associated with a given radar cross-section. This combination creates a complete moving target replication.