US Air Force, EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE: Northrop-Grumman engineers, in conjunction with the 452nd Flight Test Squadron, recently teamed up with the 412th Electronics Warfare Group in the Benefield Anechoic Facility to verify the effectiveness of production level electromagnetic interference mitigation treatments installed on the Global Hawk RQ-4, Block 30, unmanned aerial vehicle.
The test article analyzed in the Benefield Anechoic Facility is comprised of the main fuselage of the next generation Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicle.
In the nose section of the fuselage, it includes the avionics suite containing a high power satellite communication transmitter and a payload of extremely sensitive signals intelligence receiver processor systems known as the Advanced Signals Intelligence Payload.
Because these systems are positioned very close to each other in the front of the vehicle, the potential to cause electromagnetic interference between the two systems is high.
Only the Benefield Anechoic Facility is ideally suited for this type of testing because it provides an extremely quiet and no-reflective radio frequency environment so that sensitive measurements of interfering signals can be made.
The facility is the largest of its kind in the world, capable of testing the largest aerial weapon systems in the U.S. inventory.
The Benefield Anechoic Facility test team, led by 2nd Lt. Michael Stackhouse, 772nd Test Squadron electronics warfare test engineer, designed and implemented an antenna isolation measurement system that controls the Global Hawk satellite communication transmit antenna while simultaneously collecting RF data from the Advanced Signals Intelligence Payload receiver to verify the effectiveness of electromagnetic interference mitigation treatments installed on the vehicle.
The measurement system, created by Dave Mulvey and Justin Cobbs, is capable of a multitude of RF measurements in a short amount of time, allowing Northrop-Grumman test engineers to have graphic plots available to them to immediately analyze the data and make real-time decisions on the effectiveness of the electromagnetic interference treatments.
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