With the exponential rise in demand for frequencies driven by a wide variety of wireless technologies, RF spectral environments have become increasingly busy and complex. Bursting technologies – which use a wide range of spectrum for short periods of time – are now more common, along with signals that “hop” from band to band. Passive Intermod (PIM), as well as other sources of interference are also on the rise and can be especially difficult to identify and locate.
As a result, interference continues to increase and have an impact on wireless communication networks. In most scenarios, a sizable spectrum environment will have multiple undetected interference issues that are degrading performance, whether on a continuous or intermittent basis. Without specialist solutions, like SigBASE, the continuous sources are hard to identify and address and the intermittent ones are nearly impossible – and the manpower needed to achieve this is simply not financially or technically feasible.
Variables such as volume, weather, time of day and harmonics can produce intermittent interference with no apparent logic and, even if an engineer could spot them, they are gone before they can be pinpointed and identified.
For all users—particularly those in the transport, public safety and defence sectors—unidentified signal interference can have serious, even deadly consequences.
In addition to innocent interference, the detection of nefarious actors such as jammers is even more important. Quickly obtaining high-quality intelligence and accurate source location from spectrum data is of the utmost importance and may save lives.
SigBASE provides and unrivaled levels of spectrum awareness. Its signal recognition capabilities, over wide frequency spans and large geographical areas make spectrum analysis vastly more efficient than anything else available. Real-time and historical data can be combined to identify trends and find a wide variety of anomalies rapidly, efficiently and accurately.
SigBASE is specifically designed to adjust automatically to dynamically changing noise environments. This provides a greater level of sensitivity than other monitoring systems, which is a critical requirement for wideband RF data collection, as noise floors can change often and vary across the spectrum. Without the ability to dynamically adjust to the noise floor, signal activity will be missed and important data will be either lost or missed. The system’s automatic signal detection and learning capabilities ensure it is able to continuously adjust and recalibrate in noisy environments.
The system uniquely enables an operator to find inconsistencies or anomalies with greater efficiency using conflict analytics. Utilize either historical baselines, user supplied data sets and/or publicly available data sources such as the FCC Universal Licensing System, for real-time comparisons. This assists in finding, identifying and locating interferers or anomalies more efficiently.
Once an anomaly is detected, the system can automatically store, FFT data or IQ data and to demodulate certain types of signals, or geolocate Signals of Interest to provide robust actionable intelligence regarding the source.
With these capabilities, SigBASE can drastically enhance mission capabilities and operational effectiveness by reducing time to resolution and reducing the costs associated with remediating interference. Customizable alerts and triggers also ensure you are never caught off-guard.