ACE9600 Series – 600 MHz Advanced Channel Emulator

The ACE9600 is the widest-bandwidth member of Maury Microwave’s Advanced Channel Emulator family, a hardware and DSP-based test platform that inserts a range of impairments in real time. At 600MHz instantaneous bandwidth, it supports closed-loop testing of wideband satellite payloads, ground and airborne transceivers, and wireless receivers in a controlled laboratory environment, and it is signal-agnostic.

600MHz instantaneous bandwidth for wideband satellite link testing

The ACE9600 operates at a 1125MHz centre frequency with 600MHz of 1 dB RF bandwidth, the widest in the ACE9000 series. Delay ranges from 7μs to 700ms at full bandwidth, extending to 1,400ms at reduced bandwidth, with dynamic mode delay resolution of 0.1 ps.

Real-time RF link emulation with delay, Doppler and path loss

Accurate simulation of phase-continuous propagation delays, flat fading, path loss, frequency hopping, phase shift and Doppler shift lets systems engineers build realistic full-duplex path scenarios for closed-loop receiver testing. Frequency offset covers ±6.0 MHz at 0.01Hz resolution; attenuation spans 0 to 70 dB at 0.10 dB resolution with a slew rate above 70 dB/ms.

Twelve-path multipath fading with Rayleigh and Rician distributions

The DSP engine supports optional Rayleigh, Rician, log-normal and CW multipath fading across up to twelve paths per channel, with Doppler spread from 0 to 10kHz at 1Hz resolution, Rician K factor from -10 to 20 dB, path correlation in 1% steps and angle of arrival across 0 to 180°.

Digital additive white Gaussian noise with variable occupied bandwidth

AWGN with crest factor above 16 dB, PDF accuracy within 1% of theoretical Gaussian, repetition interval greater than 24 hours and spectral density flatness under 0.1 dB p-p. Noise density resolves to 0.01 dB with accuracy inside ±0.2 dB, and Eb/No resolves to 0.01 dB.

Optional payload and hardware impairment emulation

The platform can be upgraded to emulate impairments introduced by the payload and by ground hardware, including IMUX and OMUX filter emulation, programmable phase noise and group delay, amplitude ripple, gain compression distortion, AM/AM and AM/PM non-linearity, IF filter simulation and interfering signals.

Expandable to sixteen synchronised channels

Each chassis holds up to four independent simplex channels, and up to four chassis can be configured together for sixteen channels total with precise synchronisation. A very high speed digital bus provides timing and correlation between any multipath paths of any channel in any chassis.

Removable SD memory for classified laboratory compliance

All non-volatile memory holding dynamic data files, system configuration and customer-sensitive information resides on an SD card that can be removed from the instrument, allowing the ACE9600 to meet military and classified laboratory restrictions. Capacity is effectively unlimited at 32 GB.

SATGEN II orbit modelling and STK data file support

SATGEN II generates link parameter files formatted for the ACE, modelling any satellite orbit and configuring up to eight transceivers per channel — fixed earth terminals, ground vehicles, ships and aircraft, each programmable along a defined path with variable velocity. Its path loss model includes atmospheric gas losses as a function of frequency, temperature and humidity alongside free space losses. The ACE9000 series also accepts Analytical Graphics STK-generated data files.

Direct upgrade path from the SLE product line

The ACE is the follow-on platform to dBm’s satellite link emulator product line and runs all existing SLE dynamic data files, giving established users a straightforward and cost-effective upgrade as their systems become more bandwidth-intensive.