Refit of Royal Australian Navy Electronic Warfare System

The RAN required a comprehensive system refit on one of its destroyer class vessels of its electronic warfare system. The refit scope included the rotating tracker radar group, the fixed tracker radar group, all cable runs, waveguides, racks and displays below decks. Equipment encompassed broadband and wide range receivers, signal detection, signal processing and signal classification sets.

Total project planning, management and execution was undertaken from the Melbourne base facility of Niksar Australia. All equipment was initially surveyed at the refit site (Western Australia), withdrawn from the vessel and shipped to Melbourne. Refurbishment of antennas, essentially a mechanical rebuilding process due to the extent of attack by the marine environment, was handled along with all other electronic and electrical items identified in the survey.

Upon conclusion of the refurbishment exercise, all components were tested prior to shipping back to Perth and subsequent re-integration into the destroyer. Re-commissioning was then carried out and final acceptance tests conducted prior to hand back to the RAN.

MK 92 Fire Control System Automatic Testing of Digital Hybrid Microcircuits

A requirement to carry out testing of a series of proprietary hybrid microcircuits to assess arose as a part of maintenance and repair of Circuit Card Assemblies (CCA) task that was given to Niksar Australia. These units are in service in the RAN FFG vessels and were becoming obsolescent. The hybrid microcircuits contain complex combinational logic functions that are not available from any off-the-shelf source and are no longer produced. Test of these units from a series of CCAs would allow Niksar (and the RAN) to determine what units may be put back into service using parts from other faulty CCAs.

Niksar Australia carried out an analysis of the logic tables for the individual microcircuits and devised a method of test using an industrial data monitoring unit as a test interface to a PC-AT compatible computer. A complex series of digital inputs (data and clocks) were applied to a unit under test and the microcircuit’s response was captured and recorded. Test jigs that allowed the hybrid microcircuit under test to be plugged into the test unit were also constructed.

Niksar Australia developed the controlling, data capture and analysis software. Test data was read from a series of hybrid microcircuit-specific data files that were developed from the logic tables and test data provided and the units’ response compared with the required output word patterns, providing a set of test results for each unit under test, and enabling incorrect responses to indicate a faulty microcircuit.

The use of this automatic test process allowed the successful testing and re-use of many high-value components.
 

Royal Australian Navy Shallow Water Sound Range Project

Niksar Australia’s staff participated in the clarification of requirements and performance of the RAN’s Shallow Water Sound Range project at Jervis Bay. The original specification for this acoustic ranging facility was seen as an uneven and incomplete document, with highly differing depth of detail. This original specification and descriptions of hardware and software were assessed, and a full specification developed. To achieve these tasks, the mission level statement of what ranging measures of effectiveness should apply was revisited and expanded. This redefined mission statement covered all areas of the ranging facility, including standards of display to be used, and the signal processing algorithms.

At the subsystem level, the dynamics of the hydrophone automatic gain controllers were studied and modeled to reflect the requirements analysis outputs. The hydrophone sensors themselves were also studied at the specification level, again to determine suitability to meet overall performance targets. Termination of underwater cables, and the performance of the specialized underwater cables themselves was also modeled as part of the overall effort to assess the end-to-end performance of the ranging system. Laboratory trials for the cables, whose performance was unknown at the outset, were conducted as part of the development process for the project.