Digital debugging and time-domain analysis tools are currently providing a clear diagnostic insight into a broad range of military communication design and validation issues. As the armed forces move into the digital RF communication realm, specialist RF and digital domain testing solutions allow software defined radio (SDR) designers to validate the industry standard software communications architecture (SCA) framework. Modern tools feature powerful capabilities that ease the design task where they address the following test methodologies:

• Ability to handle complex test setups for multi-channel, software-programmable, hardware-configurable digital radio networking systems

• Test support for a wide variety of commercial and proprietary radio technologies, including 3GPP, 3GPP2 and IEEE 802.11 series standards

• Flexible configuration to accommodate Joint Tactical Radio System (JTRS) hardware and waveform requirements in a single test system

• Resources for integration into open SCA reference frameworks such as OSSIE, allowing  test equipment to become an integrated resource to analyze and verify the correct operation of future software radios

• Test methodology and algorithm development in Cognitive Radio test beds

• Integrated phase noise and jitter analysis to support transceiver component selection

• Intra-instrument triggering that provides insight to the instantaneous digital and RF anomalies of digital radio base-band designs