In the modern data communication and signal intelligence the user requires more and more a complete automatic system which can monitor certain frequency bands and fulfil the following main tasks:
•It controls the receiver directly, set the receiver frequency, demodulator and demodulator bandwidth, etc.
•It detects, classifies and decodes signals automatically.
•It records the results of detection, classification and decoding into a database.
•It records the spectrum in a wide bandwidth, so that the user can analyse the whole spectrum afterwards.
W-SPECTRA is exactly such a system to meet these major demands. W-SPECTRA provides:
•Comprehensive online (real-time) monitoring functions, running through the entire radio spectrum from ELF to SHF
•Intuitive graphical user interface: its main operation tab covers all online monitoring activities
•Built-in bi-directional control of receivers (native Wavecom W-PCIe receiver or WiNRADiO G3xDDC)
•Three monitoring modes: Direct Mode, Memory Scan and Frequency Search
•More than 220 mode decoders and protocols over HF/VHF/UHF/SHF
•Wideband (2 MHz) and narrowband (96 kHz) FFT and sonagram displays
•Wideband (2 MHz) and narrowband (96 kHz) signal recording in baseband (IQ) and signal playback
•Signal recording is made with various important side information (meta-data) on-the-fly, such as the receiver frequency, bandwidth and timestamp for complete investigation of the whole spectrum after the online monitoring
•Automatic demodulation and decoding of known signals to the content level
•Automatic search, classification and code check of signals over a user-defined frequency band and certain search strategy
•Automatic or manual capturing of results into a database
•Display of detection, classification and decoding results in a separate window
•Detection, classification and decoding results can be saved into files as well
•User configurable database template
•Database in XML format, providing easy processing by third-party applications
•Integrity check of the database
•Wideband spectrum editing: display a wideband IQ recording in a 2-dimensional sonagram, zoom-in view of the sonagram and cut out a signal anywhere (in time and frequency domains) from a wideband IQ recording for classification and decoding afterwards.
A typical configuration of an automatic spectrum monitoring system with W-SPECTRA can look like the following:
Example setup of a monitoring system with W-SPECTRA.
W-SPECTRA connects to a Software Defined Radio (SDR) and takes over its full control. A built-in mass storage device (e.g., an SSD) can be used by W-SPECTRA for wideband IQ signal recording.
All important operation activities are covered in the W-SPECTRA GUI “Operation” tab:
•Full receiver control: set the receiver frequency, demodulator, demodulator bandwidth, AGC, squelch level and antenna input etc. directly
•Spectrum analysis detects signals and marks them in the narrowband spectrum display (96 kHz)
•Choose a classifier or a decoder manually or automatically
•Display the classification result into a database entry
•Database operations: insert, overwrite and manually edit an entry
•Wideband spectrum display (2 MHz) with IQ signal recording and playback
•Narrowband spectrum display (96 kHz) with IQ signal recording and playback
•Display detailed classification and decoding result
•Switch among the three operation modes: Direct Mode, Memory Scan and Frequency Search
•Four buttons (Start, Stop, Previous and Next) control the work flow of the three operation modes.
W-SPECTRA GUI Operation tab contains five parts: direct receiver control, classifier and decoder setting, wideband spectrum display and media player/recorder, narrowband spectrum display and media player/recorder and classification and decoding result display.