Aerospace/Defense RF Coaxial Cable Test

Aerospace/Defense RF Coaxial Cable Test

Keysight Technologies and Beta LaserMike

Fast, reliable and repeatable testing of complete RF coaxial cable assemblies

The complexity of aerospace/defense in-vehicle cable inventories creates major challenges in their testing. The effectiveness of avionics and defense systems is dependent upon the integrity of their RF coaxial cable assemblies. RF coax cable faults can lead to catastrophic results and accurate, reliable testing is essential to reduce the risk of failure.

The DCM HPCC-3000 RF coaxial cable test system from Beta LaserMike has been developed specifically to manage and test the complete cable inventory of aerospace and defense vehicles including airplanes, helicopters, tanks and others. The system can be used to test the RF parameters of cable assemblies on the test bench, within harnesses or within the vehicle-under-test. The DCM HPCC3000 tests RF coaxial cables up to 40 GHz.

A Keysight E5061B ENA Series network analyzer is used to make the RF measurements on the cable assemblies. The analyzer is fully integrated into the DCM HPCC3000 test system and is used to measure cable parameters such as VSWR, insertion loss, return loss and phase. TDR and distance-to-fault reporting allows cable errors to be localized for rapid diagnosis. A proprietary software solution is used to automate fully the RF measurements for ease of use.

The system software provides detailed reports in a variety of user-defined formats including graphical and tabulated displays showing pass/fail and test limits. All of the results are stored in a relational database for further analysis, archive and quality assurance purposes. A wide variety of test reports are available, including graphical reports with multiple graphs per page, summary reports of all cables tested within the vehicle or vehicle assembly, single page test certificates, and more.

– RF coaxial cable testing for aerospace/defense vehicles

– Test RF coax cable assemblies on the bench, in harness or in-vehicle

– RF measurements up to 40 GHz with Keysight E5061B ENA analyzer

– Proprietary software for fully automated measurements

– Extensive user-defined graphical and tabulated reporting

– Test results stored in relational database for analysis, archive and QA

– Achieve rapid, reliable testing of in-vehicle RF coaxial cables

Aerospace/Defense RF Coaxial Cable Test

The system is easy to operate. Once it is set up the operator simply views the cable inventory to find the next in the vehicle to be assessed and testing is then underway. The DCM HPCC-3000 automatically sets the test parameters and guides the operator through any required cable connections or S-parameter calibrations that are required. The system knows the adapters that are needed for hook-up and automatically compensates for those in use.

By performing comprehensive, automated RF measurements using a Keysight vector network analyzer, the Beta LaserMike DCM HPCC-3000 test system allows you to achieve rapid and reliable assessment of aerospace/defense in-vehicle RF coax cable assemblies.