Automated Calibration of Sensitivity and Noise Floor Levels on Electronic Warfare Systems

Electronic Warfare (EW) systems are designed and built in consideration of critical customer requirements. Sensitivity level and Dynamic Range performances are among the most critical specifications that affect the system functionality heavily. It is also troublesome and demanding to achieve these requirement-based specifications at production phase. Two identical systems which consist of the same units and Radio Frequency (RF) lines tend to have different performance characteristics due to production methods. In order to pass system requirements, Electronic Support Measure (ESM) and Electronic Intelligence (ELINT) systems need to be calibrated at production phase. It is known that gain and noise floor levels of RF lines are important performance specifications that has huge implications on most system functions. In this paper, we propose a new approach that is developed in order to conduct automated calibration of RF gain and noise floor levels in EW systems. RF gain calibration is thought of as a precondition for passing sensitivity and dynamic range requirements. Similarly, calibration of noise floor levels is viewed as critical for different system functions such as online phase calibration of two identical RF lines. These two different approaches are explained in this paper and evaluation results of real-world calibration done with an 8 channel ESM system powered by a Superheterodyne receiver are shared.