Next generation broadband digital receiver technology

Current Electronic Support Measure (ESM) receiver functions on combat, reconnaissance and surveillance aircraft are being tasked to provide more threat information, more accurately, and on a shorter timeline. At the same time, the complexity of the signal environment is increasing. Today´s ESM receiver technology is based on analog components that are costly to manufacture, have large size, weight and power (SWAP) characteristics, have limited performance and are costly to maintain. Because of these limitations, it is not practical to improve the performance of current ESM receiver systems nor is it practical to build new low cost high, high performance systems using analog technology. The objective of this paper is to present an approach to build a broadband digital ESM receiver that will provide a low cost, high performance solution for tomorrow´s platforms