ELINT Receiver Controller, Display and User Interface

ELINT receiver front panel

This control and display subsystem for a microwave receiver provides many of the functions of a digital storage 'scope and spectrum analyser.

Giastar had considerable freedom in designing the hardware and user interface - the client's requirements were given only in very general terms.

The unit was intended to be a proof-of-concept prototype, but was used with only a few minor changes for production.

Major features include:

Digitiser:
- Fast A-D and buffer memory to capture single-shot events.
- Fast peak hold/dump circuit to capture pulses with a duration less than one sample period.
Display (the display driver was written from scratch - the main display module has no intelligence):
- Single or multiple traces.
- On-screen annotation.
- Cursors with position/delta readout.
User Interface:
- Parameter entry via numeric keypad, step keys and spinwheel.
- Dynamically re-assigned ("soft") function keys.
- Save/restore configurations and traces.

What is not conveyed by a simple feature list is the fact that, unlike some competitive products, the user interface was designed with an understanding of how the system would be used and what the operators would intuitively expect. The software was designed to impress radio operators, not programmers!

The main controller was an 80x86, programmed in Modula-2 (this was some time ago - if we were doing the job today we would use Ada 95.) An 8051 family microcontroller programmed in assembler was used for the keyboard and display interface.

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