Modern radar/electronic warfare signals (EW) are more diverse than previous signals. Frequency agility, low probability of interception (LPI), large bandwidth and interleaved pulse repetition interval (PRI) bring measurement challenges, as it now takes longer to capture pulses to see radar patterns or electronic attack systems (EA) Test to make sure they are working properly. With the combination of mobile cell phone jammer technology signals lasting 30 seconds or more with greater bandwidth, the challenge of effectively capturing, analyzing and reporting results has become more severe.
EA, RGPO failure example A basic technology that uses mobile phone signal jammer radar to prevent it from successfully tracking a target is called range gate (RGPO). Imagine a situation where the electronic attack system (EA) on an aircraft needs to block the radar of a surface-to-air missile to prevent the missile from being launched or directed towards the aircraft. In this example, the distance from the launch point of the rocket to the aircraft is 10 kilometers. It is believed that it takes about 20 seconds for the missile to reach this distance-this is an important time frame for obtaining pulses.
With the help of RGPO, the aircraft’s EA system listens to the missile radar, and then uses the range gate in the radar tracking system by generating an incorrect radar return signal. The interference signal received by the radar receiver is larger than the actual radar RF pulse reflection, which may be 10 dB to 20 dB larger, and will gradually move away from the actual reflection position. This allows the rangefinder in the radar receiver to subtract from tracking true reflections and track false signals from false echoes. Then, the jamming pulse disappeared and the radar interrupted its track.
The requirements for collecting radio frequency pulses, in order to effectively evaluate the operating conditions of the mobile phone jammer RGPO, the goal is to capture each radar reflected pulse and Jammer pulse within a few 10-second RGPO cycles. A full scan (with or without segmented acquisition) using 128GSa/s is not sufficient to acquire pulses on the RGPO period. In addition, due to the lack of pulses during the upgrade stagnation time, the upgrade time of 5 µs makes it difficult to use a fixed segment.
A better approach is to use segmented variable width acquisition and real-time digital down conversion, where the IF trigger detects when a signal is present and only stores it in the segment when there is a signal. This eliminates the dead time between pulses and maximizes the use of memory. Now, 800 MSa/s in-phase and quadrature-phase (I and Q) data with a bandwidth of 640 MHz can be used to capture the modulation on the carrier, thereby expanding the oscilloscope’s memory.
The entire scene time (including the missile’s potential flight time) that can capture RF pulses has been greatly increased. Using the BHQ radar pulse option, the VSA software can capture 83,000 pulses in the recording mode, which is approximately 50 seconds of the scene time. This is enough to analyze the flight time of a 20-second missile and several 10-second periods of RGPO engagement including pre-launch interactions. This includes checking the RGPO process by displaying PRI in trace D.