Digital RF Battlespace Emulator (DRBE)
Abstract
The Digital RF Battlespace Emulator (DRBE) program is developing a large-scale, interactive, emulated radiofrequency (RF) environment, providing the DoD with much needed capability to cost-effectively evaluate adaptive, intelligent, and spatially distributed next-generation RF systems. Current U.S. test infrastructure is no longer able to successfully exercise RF systems in relevant environments, which should account for hundreds of DoD systems coordinating against hundreds of adversary systems. Due to the critical dependency of nearly all platforms and missions on the RF spectrum and the increasingly advanced RF capabilities of peer adversaries, current infrastructure limitations represent a critical capability gap. Existing test approaches are either: 1) small-scale laboratory tests under well controlled but unrealistic conditions or 2) massive training exercises, which occur at most annually due to the required cost and manpower and do not fully collect necessary data. To overcome these limitations, DRBE is leveraging advances in massively multi-core computing hardware and high-bandwidth digital cross connects to emulate realistic RF environments that account for RF platform movement, signal propagation effects and delays, signal interference, and interactions between RF systems. The electronics architecture which supports these goals is beyond anything that exists today, based on the power and latency requirements that this emulation environment demands. DRBE is pursuing three technical thrust areas: architecture, massively multi-core computing, and scenario modeling. The resulting test environment will allow plug-and-play connections for hundreds of RF systems in a 100 km battlespace test. Multi-system exercises will then be quickly executed through many different combat scenarios and variations. DRBE is serving to develop concept of operations (CONOPS), inform battle plans, and fine-tune the performance of both individual and large groups of RF systems.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Accomplishment
- Publication Date
- Oct 01, 2021
- Source ID
- 827ae89783a4b5363f4b70fef138e3af
Related Documents
- Root: ELECTRONICS TECHNOLOGY