Design and Development of Waveforms for Airborne Software Defined Radio SDR

Abstract

newlineThe way war is fought depends on the age. The war fighting tactics have been evolving newlinealong with the technology innovation. Accordingly, military community is transforming newlinethe battlefield of 21st century around Network-Centric Warfare (NCW) which is based on newlineinformation sharing through digital communication. Therefore, existing hardware intensive newlinecommunication systems of on-board airborne platforms is being replaced with software newlineintensive digital radio systems called as Software-Defined Radio (SDR). When deployed newlinefor exploitation, these radios need to be reconfigured periodically to meet the prevailing newlineoperational needs. Accordingly, radio equipment is reconfigured, enhanced and upgraded newlinethrough software updates that define the radio functionalities. In military terms it is called newlineas Waveforms . newlineThus, waveform defines the complete functionalities of a communication system. The newlineradio deployed on airborne platform has multiple channels. One of the channels that are newlinecurrently in the proposal is the satcom channel. Although, hardware based satcom radios newlineare available, the software defined radio is preferred for the quick reconfiguration through newlinesoftware updates. Design and development of satcom waveforms for software defined radio newlineis the scope of this research. newlineAll military aircraft including fighters shall be equipped with SDR as on-board newlinecommunication system with satcom as one of the channels. It supports both voice and data in newlineUHF band. The satcom waveforms developed for tactical applications are governed by newlinecertain regulatory requirements that are defined in military standards i.e.MIL-STD-188- newline181A, interoperability standard for satellite communication . In satcom, digital data are newlinetransmitted and received in short bursts and data rate is usually as low as 2400 bps and 4800 newlinebps. This burst transceiver design has additional complexities as compared to conventional newlinemodem design. In Burst modem, the carrier lock has to happen every time the burst data newlineappears. The synchronization bloc