The requirements of the aerospace and defence (A&D) sector have pushed the test and measurement (T&M) industry to the edge, as system reliability and integrity are of utmost importance in this mission-critical sector.The electronics and technology used in this industry needs to be running at 100 per cent efficiency to ensure that the equipment doesn’t malfunction, operate sub-optimally or get damaged. This is where electronic test equipment enters the picture.
The most important requirements for T&M in aerospace and defence are adaptability to evolving technologies, bandwidth and software-defined instrumentation. There is an increasing need to support an array of antennas with multichannel synchronization and coherent operations with wider bandwidth and recreation of spectrum simulation. With growing testing necessities, upgradable platforms are the focus of leading companies for enhancing the durability of test equipment and diminish the cost of test. Cyber security will also have a huge impact on the aerospace and defence community in the next years and has started to gain a lot of attention globally with the need for a high level of flexibility and test systems to support malicious attacks of secured networks.
An ideal test system for the A&D sector should be reliable, flexible and, most importantly be able to withstand extreme conditions such as shock, vibration and wide operating temperature ranges. The role of T&M is very important in the aerospace and defence industry. Safety of flights and passengers is assured by test and measurement industry. Any aircraft or communication system is well tested before it is commercially deployed in an aircraft. Apart from deployment in aircraft, T&M equipment are used in operations and maintenance. This helps in the smooth and safe operation of aircraft. Radio navigations systems such as VHF omni-directional range (VOR) systems and instrument landing systems (ILS) are used by aircraft industry for providing vertical and horizontal navigation during take off and landing of the aircraft which ensured safety of passengers and aircrafts.
T&M industry becomes more important in defence system when it comes to national security. The general trend in the A&D industry is to have more technologically-capable and smaller platforms and military systems. The most important requirements regarding test equipment are the full capture of signals of greater bandwidth, wideband capabilities, architecture alignment with multifunction antenna systems, more software content, and greater ease of use. Areas of development where T&M industry is emerging are listed below:
mmWave: There is continuous adoption of ultraband radars, and GHz bandwidth is going to be a key requirement for signal intelligence and spectrum monitoring. There is growing research on millimeter-wave frequencies up from 30 GHz for special purpose radars and other equipment.
New Radars & Radio: There is an emerging market shift from A&D users using RF signal analyzers and generators to more radio prototyping equipment. Several users may adopt software-defined radios instead of traditional instruments. In civil aviation, there is a trend toward convergence of technologies—including VHF Omni Directional Radio Range (VOR), instrument landing system (ILS), communications, weather, radar, and global position system (GPS)—into a single radio. There is also a shift toward radar and other EW technologies that have more signal processing capabilities (such as cognitive radars), and these technologies require T&M equipment capable of processing large RF bandwidths. Demand for products that can address the high bandwidth and signal processing requirements for the high-bandwidth data is expected to grow.
5G: With the arrival of 5G, along with A&D applications pushing the requirements of signal and spectrum analyzers, new multi-channel applications will have a direct impact on bandwidth usage and frequency ranges.
Satellites: There are new trends and development in satellites. An increasing number of companies are focusing on the design of new commercial satellites, giving rise to a new test paradigm to maintain low costs and providing opportunities for T&M vendors. The advances in spectrum analysis, cutting-edge network analyser technology, and the wide range of signal generators and power meters available, ensure that the right tools exist to test your satellite system correctly.
Competitive Landscape: A greater stream of product releases, effective promotional/marketing campaigns, software development, focus on SDR, penetration of ATE solutions, and continuous focus on improving functionality in each of the segments making up the A&D industry (radar, satellite, military, SIGINT avionics, etc.) has elevated the image of electronic test in aerospace and defense.
Download Techmezine Android app on google play store: Download Now
