Aeroflex ALT-8000 radio altimeter test

Aeroflex has introduced the ALT-8000, claimed to be the world’s first RF-based portable radio altimeter flightline test set. It is a lightweight universal test set for 4.3 GHz FMCW (frequency modulated continuous carrier wave) radio altimeters and pulse radio altimeters with a 12″ colour touch screen.

It is said to be the first flightline test system of its kind as an inexpensive, portable simulator for testing radio altimeters installed in aircraft and UAV (unmanned aerial vehicles).

Until now, flightline test sets have not been RF based and have only tested the analog or digital back-end of the receiver via test port signal injection. Existing RF-based test systems have been confined to bench test applications and rely on delay lines to check altitude indications at one or two fixed points.

The test set may be directly coupled to the radio altimeter transmitter/receiver ports or may be connected via supplied TX/RX antenna couplers, which accommodate most aircraft antenna variants.

As a result, faulty radio altimeter system elements can be identified faster.

RF simulation of radio altitude from -30 to +15,000 m (±0.45 m accuracy) is provided and altitude rate may be set to provide a smooth ramping altitude simulation to verify decision heights and altitude trips, for auto-land systems.

The supplied antenna couplers allow the radio altitude system to be quickly verified, without access being required to test ports on the unit under test. The RF looped test verifies TX frequency, power, sweep rate; the RF level control provides the means to test the UUT sensitivity.