White Paper: Electronics & Computers
Expedite Critical Wideband Signal Recorders in Defense Applications
SPONSORED BY: ![]()
Capturing RF signals with precise timing over long sessions is both a necessity and a challenge for successful development, testing and deployment in many defense applications including radar, software radio and SIGINT. Many new applications produce complex wideband signals, ultrawide-bandwidth recorders, rich with design-optimizing features, can be used by engineers to characterize operation and to create new signal processing techniques that enhance system performance. These recorders also help operators and analysts improve data review and analysis to extract critical information.
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Overview
This document presents Mercury Systems' Talon® wideband signal recorders and the SystemFlow® software suite, designed to accelerate development, testing, and deployment of defense-related RF and radar systems. Talon recorders provide high-speed, multi-channel recording with analog-to-digital conversion rates from 200 MS/s up to 6.4 GS/s, supporting wideband and ultra-wideband signals with high dynamic range and exceptional recording speeds. They come in portable, rackmount, and small form factor (SFF) ruggedized form factors suited for lab, UAV, military vehicle, and aircraft pod environments.
A key differentiator of Talon products is their out-of-the-box readiness, integrating a Windows workstation platform that automatically stores data in native NTFS format for immediate accessibility, eliminating conversion delays. The SystemFlow software offers a user-friendly GUI for intuitive setup, configuration, and control, enabling operators to quickly create custom profiles, schedule recording, and monitor system health remotely. Advanced features include looped recording, synchronous phase multi-channel acquisition, and GPS-referenced timing for precise time stamping and synchronization over long durations.
Software capabilities further include an integrated Signal Viewer for real-time and playback visualization in both time and frequency domains, plus spectrogram and waterfall displays. Data extraction tools allow selective copying of signals of interest for focused analysis. The ArchiTek™ FPGA development suite enables user-supplied digital signal processing IP to be embedded on-the-fly within the recorder, reducing post-processing overhead. Also, Sentinel™ software automates signal detection and intelligent recording by scanning frequency spans and triggering only when signals exceed user-set thresholds, ideal for remote and unattended operations.
Several use cases demonstrate Talon's flexibility: synchronously recording satellite signals with GPS timing across multiple widely spaced ground stations for triangulation; capturing RF signals on a rotating radar dish to diagnose slip ring faults; and UAV-based surveillance recording of RF spectra at 4 GHz sampling rates for over four hours using removable NMVe storage.
Together, Mercury’s Talon recorders and SystemFlow software deliver complete, high-performance, easy-to-deploy solutions tailored to demanding defense applications where precise wideband RF data capture, analysis, and secure, efficient data management are critical. The modular, integrated approach streamlines field and lab operations, empowering rapid troubleshooting and enhanced system characterization.