Test and Evaluation

Test and evaluation is an essential part of any engineering development program. Test & Evaluation activities play a significant role for success of all spacecraft missions. A wide range of subsystems such as antennas, receivers, multiplexers, de-multiplexers, narrow and broadband filters; high and low power amplifiers and other passive components; with multi-carrier excitation are characterized in specified environmental condition. Parameters critical for system performance, such as output power, amplitude non-linearity, phase noise, frequency stability, group delay, AM to PM transfer/conversion, BER, NPR etc. can be measured accurately and precisely.

The primary objectives of Test and Evaluation program are given below:

• Functional Testing - to confirm that the design meets or exceeds the basic performance requirements.
• Environmental Testing - to ensure that the design is capable of operating under the expected range of environments. Environmental Stress to identify design, workmanship and process induced defects.
• Life Testing - to demonstrate that the wear out mechanism does not affect functionality during mission life period.
• To generate adequate test/calibration data base for subsequent use in actual mission operations.

Qualification testing is carried out to obtain adequate assurance concerning the ability of the hardware to meet subsequent acceptance tests as well as the mission requirements. Acceptance tests are performed on the flight articles to determine that they would survive the flight environment meeting the performance requirements. These tests also ensure that the equipment is free from workmanship defects.

Apart from the above testing operations, the test and evaluation program includes establishing appropriate test specifications and procedures, qualification and acceptance criteria and processing and review of results. Test Review Boards are constituted to certify the validity and successful completion of equipment qualification as evidenced by the results.

Capabilities

• Measurement of transmission & reflection parameters using Network analyzers up to 40 GHz.
• Measurement of absolute RF power and frequency up to 110 GHz.
• Automatic Phase noise measurement facility up to 13 GHz.
• Measurement of noise figure using noise figure meter and spectrum analyzer up to 110 GHz.
• Spurious, harmonics & inter-modulation measurement using Spectrum analyzer up to 110 GHz.
• Simultaneous testing of multiple units during environmental testing.
• State of the art automatic measurement test set up using in-house developed measurement software.
• Remote monitoring of test parameters through intranet.