Military aircraft from fighters to refueling planes all need accurate positioning, whereas high performance combat jets perform far more intricate and violent maneuvers. GPS / GNSS receivers in such aircraft must re-acquire satellites rapidly and testing should include this capability. High-dynamics testing for guided munitions or extreme in-flight maneuvers are critical to the development of navigation and guidance systems and pre-trial testing in the lab will eliminate problems, reduce cost and make deployment quicker.
Within the controlled laboratory environment, a wide variety of testing is possible, test configurations that include not only the simulated GPS / GNSS signals but also simulated inertial sensor data, jamming and interference sources. Remote motion data and hardware-in-the-loop configurations can be readily specified and accomplished.
Testing should involve all current and modernized GPS signals including classified military codes (SA/A-S Y-code and M-code to ICD-GPS-700A). Testing should also be conducted under high-dynamic simulation scenarios, with motion models tailored to facilitate military test requirements.
As the test set-up is directly under user control, and repeatable, testing is generally efficient and device performance can be readily characterised and optimised.
Advanced configurations for coherent stimulation of adaptive antenna arrays with both GNSS and coherent interference sources are feasible and have been implemented in the field by Spirent.