Technical data

ASTi ACE Studio Components Reference Guide Rev. M DOC-01-TELAS-CRG-4
Copyright © 2014 Advanced Simulation Technology inc. 179
15.0. Radio Components
Building radios in ACE is slightly different from the traditional modeling used in
other ASTi generations of software. A basic radio is now made up of two
components, a Transceiver and a Radio Control Unit (RCU). The two objects are
analogous to live radios on many aircrafts. Typically, there is a base unit which is
responsible for the over-the-air transmission known as the RT and control heads
that serve as the interface for the pilot or co-pilot.
The idea in ACE is that every radio requires use of the Transceiver component, a
master object which can be used for any radio, but it contains a minimum of
settings. This way, if the user wants to simulate two different types of radios, the
RCU is used to customize the Transceiver to be an ARC-210 versus an ARC-232.
The third piece of the radio is the fill that it receives from the CommPlan located in
the Layout of the project. The CommPlan provides a flexible way of adjusting
internal radio parameters such as Modulation Type or the Transmit Gain. Previous
generations of ASTi software accomplished the fill as a Mode Table within the
Radio component. With the fills placed in the CommPlan, it is now easy to share
mode settings across several radios inside a model. In addition to the different
mode settings, the fill of a radio can also set default frequencies.
The most commonly configured radio uses two components, the Transceiver and
RCU_Basic. The RCU provides a fill from the CommPlan as well as a suite of
parameters which can override their counterparts from within the fill. For example,
RCU_Basic has a loaded fill and is using Net 1, which sets the frequency of the
radio to 101MHz. This information is sent down to the Transceiver via the
Transceiver ID located in both components. But suppose a user wanted to have
every setting inside the net remain the same, except that they wanted to use a new
frequency of 105MHz. By setting the Frequency of the RCU to 105Mhz, that will
override the fill, and the Transceiver will act accordingly.
A radio can switch between any number of nets, defined in the communications
plan, each of which can be custom tailored to provide control over parameters such
as modulation, noise, bandwidth, crypto system and key, frequency hopping net ID,
SATCOM, and other parameters. The default communications plan fill will support
the most common modes used by real RF radios, including UHF, VHF, HF,
SINCGARS and HaveQuick. This allows the user to get started quickly, while
retaining the flexibility to further fine tune the simulation. The Transceiver is also
capable of receiving and transmitting TDL messages. Various voice-encoding
schemes are also supported including CVSD, mu-law and PCM.
In general, settings that relate to how the radio appears on the network are in the
Transceiver, and settings which customize the radio for simulation are placed in the
RCU. For more information about building a basic radio, see the radio tutorials
inside the T4 Training Manual (DOC-01-TEL4-TM-1).
The following section details the radio components and the objects within them.
The radio components include:
• ColocatedBeacon
• GenericControl
• HFServer
• Intercom Transceiver
•ICU
• MarkerTone
• MorseKeyer
• RCUbasic
• RCUcryptokey
• RCUfrequency
• RCUhavequick
• RCUoverride
• RCUsincgars
• RCUtxpower
• Receiver
• Relay
• Satellite
• Transceiver
• Transmitter
• VORTAC_Controller