10 Signal Radar And Warfare COTS Using Simulation Transceivers

Tabor Electronics’ white paper outlines ten essential tips for using commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) transceivers in electronic warfare and radar signal simulation. The core technology is the Proteus Arbitrary Waveform Transceiver (AWT), a scalable and modular FPGA-based platform that serves as both a high-bandwidth RF transmitter and receiver. The Proteus system delivers up to 4.5 GHz of transmission bandwidth and 2.7 GHz of reception bandwidth, with PCIe Gen 3 x8 backplane connectivity for real-time waveform streaming and processing.

The paper details how the Proteus AWT enables signal simulation using direct digital synthesis, supports wide and ultra-wideband (UWB) signal generation, and offers fast frequency agility via its built-in numerically controlled oscillator (NCO). Coherent signal generation is possible both for single and multiple channels, facilitating advanced scenarios like directional signal simulation (Angle of Arrival) and multi-emitter battlefield emulation.

Real-time scenario generation and hardware-in-the-loop (HiL) testing are supported, making the system ideal for radar target and altimeter evaluation. The platform also enables simulation of electromagnetic background noise (EME) for greater realism. A key advantage of the Proteus system is its COTS design, which eliminates the need for costly custom hardware like up-converters and phase shifters, while maintaining high performance and programmability via languages like MATLAB and Python.

Overall, the white paper illustrates how COTS-based systems like Proteus can significantly streamline the development, testing, and evaluation of modern radar and electronic warfare systems with agility, accuracy, and cost-effectiveness.