Flight testing of radar and WAM facilities is usually carried out as passive target-only inspections in the surveillance domain. A flight testing aircraft with a more or less known aircraft radar cross section (for primary radar), and a transponder (for SSR) are employed, and the radar's performance is assessed using a software tool, e.g. SASS-C. ICAO DOC 8071 Volume III (Testing of surveillance radar systems, First Edition 1998, still in use), serves as the reference document for flight testing. For MSSR or WAM flight inspection it is useful to know the antenna radiation patterns, if a qualified evaluation of the surveillance coverage is required. If there is no numerical 3D pattern available representing the antenna installed performance, it can be partially replaced by far field measurements from air to ground on the 1090MHz channel. During flight inspection, it may be desirable to simulate a greater distance of the aircraft by selecting lower transponder sensitivity and output power. This is the preferred method described in DOC 8071. There should be a specific difference in radiated signal power between normal and attenuated mode for typical flight patterns, e.g. inbound or outbound. This difference must be calibrated having all relevant parameters in the loop. The paper focuses on a new method to implement this attenuated transponder in a Learjet 35A by modifying the antenna cable path of one of its primary avionics transponders, while leaving the other untouched. A calibration procedure covers the transponder itself, the antenna installed performance in the electromagnetic far-field and the antenna diversity operation on top and bottom of the fuselage. This procedure comprises both primary transponders to obtain the differences in the RF signal. It makes use of a dedicated SSR signal-in-space monitoring system which receives and records the raw Mode S transponder replies as band-pass signals. After an initial calibration, it is intended to renew this calibration on a weekly basis at the beginning and/or end of regular flight inspection missions when the aircraft is airborne and close to the home base. Some results of the calibration procedure will be presented.


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    Title :

    Qualification of aircraft for surveillance radar and WAM flight inspection


    Contributors:


    Publication date :

    2013


    Size :

    14 Seiten, 10 Bilder, 3 Quellen


    Type of media :

    Conference paper


    Type of material :

    Storage medium


    Language :

    English




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