The subject of these specifications is the delivery and commissioning of hardware (HW) and software (SW) for a substantial extension of existing measurement and analysis technology in the Virtual Road Simulation and Testing Facility (VISTA) of the Thuringian Innovation Center for Mobility (ThIMo) of the TU Ilmenau , The aim of this extension is to improve the measurement capability for vehicle antennas (single radiators and groups) in the installed state and for the channel emulation based thereon as an elementary component of virtual driving tests. The call contains three closely related lots.
In order to correctly map the radiation behavior of vehicle antennas, the antennas must be measured in the installed state. The typically high degree of integration poses new challenges for the measurement technology compared to the state of the art. Lot 1 therefore includes hardware for measuring the three-dimensional polarimetric antenna alignment pattern of vehicle antennas in the installed state, both in amplitude and in phase, without access to the feed point of the antenna. The lot further includes a controllable switching device that allows characterization of up to 16 different antennas with the existing measurement system during a measurement sweep.
The antenna data obtained by step (1) shall be processed and analyzed with a bundle of suitable software modules with respect to different electromagnetic boundary conditions. The measured data must also be linked to common electromagnetic simulation programs and embedded in models for emulation of the radio channel.
Lot 3 provides HW-based and SW-controllable emulation systems for VISTA that allow bidirectional transmission of realistic communication signals for virtual road tests, taking into account the data obtained in (1) and (2). The emulation systems include front-ends and antennas and, in accordance with common channel models, must offer the possibility of imparting to the transmission signal parameters of a realistic radio transmission, such as eg. Delay, Doppler shift, and fading.