Design Of Automatic Test System Based On Missile-borne Telemetry Module

In recent years, digital telemetry technology has been widely used in the military field, which has replaced analog telemetry system. With the increasing development of the scientific and technological level, the systems that are tested become more and more complex, and the requirements of the accuracy of telemetry system are also increasing. The accuracy of the telemetry system has a direct impact on the operational status of the weapons. High-precision and rapid test for telemetry module becomes very important. So developing a set of automatic test system for testing and calibration telemetry system has a very significant meaning.Firstly, the paper introduces the source of the subject and the significance of the research, and describes the concept of automatic test system, as well as the development in the world. Then making a detailed functional analysis of the demand for the subject, and proposing a hardware and software architecture of the missile-borne telemetry module based automatic test system using a top-down design process. Moreover, it describes the implementations of the main module in detail. Finally, the test results of the missile-borne telemetry module on some models which come from this system have been given. At last, some prospects of the second phase of the project are put forward.The hardware of the automatic test system includes an industrial personal computer (TPC), power module, high amplitude multi-channel programmable analog signal source based on Field Programmable Gate Array(FPGA), digital signal source, decoding module, communication module, and purchased test equipment (mainly arbitrary waveform generator,61/2-digit multimeter, programmable power supplies and radio frequency (RF) spectrum analyzer). The software environment is built by LabView graphical programming software, which can configure the hardware parameters and read the test data back. It can also manage the database, so it is convenient to manage a variety of data of multiple measurements.The test of the automatic test system on missile-borne telemetry module mainly includes the test and calibration of the mixed analog-digital signal encoding module equipped on telemetry module, as well as automatic measurement of the RF indicators of transmitter module. The final calibration and measurement results should be output in the form of statements and printed automatically. Wherein the process of measurement and calibration of the encoding module is that the analog signal source and the digital signal source are controlled by the IPC to produce the corresponding excitation signal. The decoding module demodulates the pulse code modulation stream from the encoding module and gets the corresponding parameters of the excitation signal. By contrast of the decoding results and the excitation signal from the signal source, can detect the correctness and accuracy of the encoding module. The RF indicators of transmitter module include carrier frequency, frequency offset, frequency stability, modulation distortion, noise suppression and output power. The programmable power supply provides power to the transmitter module and the arbitrary waveform generator provides the carrier signal. The RF output is connected directly to the spectrum analyzer and then the transmitter RF parameters can be obtained. After some software mathematical operation, we can get the desired results.According to the design programs provided in the article, we have been successfully designed a missile-borne telemetry module-based automated testing system in kind. It has been passed the detection of a research institute of China Ordnance Group, and officially put into use.