Radar and Electronic Warfare

"With NI software and hardware, we created an automated solution to successfully test antenna operations in just five minutes, which is considerably less time compared to the 30 minutes we needed to manually perform a test. This equates to more than 500 hours saved annually with automated testing."

- Peter Aschof - Tel Instrument Electronics Corp.

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Integrating NI’s graphical system design approach with its modular hardware and software platforms simplifies system development from research and development systems to deployed mission systems to operations and maintenance support systems. This integrated start-to-finish solution decreases program costs while producing reliable, precise results.

Phase-coherent multiple-channel RF acquisition and generation, with frequency coverage up to 26.5 GHz, and open FPGA-based processing combined with comprehensive NI signal processing libraries offer a COTS platform for prototyping, testing, and deploying radar and signals intelligence systems.

RF Record and Playback System

The FPGA-based NI PXIe-5641R RIO IF transceiver provides a flexible platform for software defined radio design. Using the NI LabVIEW FPGA Module, you can create or reuse LabVIEW FPGA or VHDL communications IP. The IF transceiver module integrates with the NI PXI-5600 downconverter and NI PXI-5610 upconverter modules for full transmit-and-receive capabilities.

• Capture real-world impairments of off-the-air signals
• Continuously record up to 50 MHz of instantaneous bandwidth for more than two and a half hours
• Play back up to 100 MHz of instantaneous bandwidth
• Record and play back FM, GPS, DVB, ATSC, and more

View an example RF record and playback system

NI MIMO Test System

The preconfigured NI MIMO Test System helps you prototype up to 4x2 and 2x4 multiple input, multiple output (MIMO) systems in a single PXI chassis. With the shared local oscillator (LO) architecture, you can achieve tight channel-to-channel synchronization. In addition, with the high-speed PXI Express backplane, you can stream signals to and from RAID disk drives.

• Tight synchronization with <0.1 deg typical channel-to-channel jitter
• Up to four channels of phase-coherent RF signal generation in a single PXI chassis
• Ideal prototyping platform for up to 4x4 MIMO systems
• Ready-to-use LabVIEW example code

View an example MIMO test system

Software Defined Radio (SDR) System

The FPGA-based NI PXIe-5641R RIO IF transceiver provides a flexible platform for SDR design. Using the NI LabVIEW FPGA Module, you can create or reuse LabVIEW FPGA or VHDL communications IP. The IF transceiver module integrates with the NI PXI-5600 downconverter and NI PXI-5610 upconverter modules for full transmit-and-receive capabilities.

• 9 kHz to 2.7 GHz RF frequency
• 20 MHz instantaneous bandwidth
• Integrated digital downconversion and upconversion
• Xilinx Virtex-5 SX95T FPGA
• Interoperability with VHDL and LabVIEW FPGA code

View an example SDR test system