Category Archives: Digital

ALE [MIL-STD-188-141A]: Which one is the best Decoder?

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This is an update from my post two days ago. I have expanded the number of test signals and added some hints.

Does your decoder read this track? Buried in noise and plagued by multipath fading, the recordings below will separate the wheat from the whaff.

Often I am asked – and sometimes even asking myself! – “Which one is the best decoder for ALE?” This means: Which one delivers the best decoding under demanding conditions?

To test this, I made a recording of twelve stations “on the air” plus one weak signal, buried in Additive White Gaussian Noise, AWGN. All signals are correctly tuned, no one invers. All were read by at leastby one of my decoders “in a row”.

To test your decoders, you should download this WAV file of 131 seconds length and play it. It can be either directly opened by some decoder, or feed it via virtual audio cable (VAC) into a decoder. I used Audacity for this.

I am as interested in the results as you are – so please drop me a line to dk8ok [at] gmx.net. I like to encourage you to try all ALE decoders you have at hand – the more, the better.

Already the first results were surprising. This concerned both, the decoding ability of the decoders and the repeatability of the test. So far, the following decoders had participated: go2monitor, Krypto500, MARS-ALE, MultiPSK, Sorcerer, and W-Code. Steve, N2CKH, had written some valuable hints to optimize his MARS-ALE software for SIGINT purposes – please see his comment.


This WAV file contains the calls of thirteen ALE stations. Download and save this file (point to the icon, press right mouse button …). Then feed it to your decoders. Copy the results and send them to me. Have fun!

GMDSS & Display Launcher: Monitoring seven Channels in parallel

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DiplayLauncher_4

GMDSS-Display reading decoded data streams from seven MultiPSK’s instances in parallel, presenting all information neatly in one database.

GMDSS is a system of ship-coast and coast-ship digital communications on six main HF channels. At an average location in Germany, you will receive about 5000 messages altogether during 24 hours.

In the past, I mostly used the excellent and free YaDD software to decode all channels in parallel (yes, YaDD can be opened in multi instances, each one in a separate folder).

During HFDL monitoring, I came across Mike Simpson’s free software Display Launcher which neatly collects now up to 24 different data streams, coming from up to 24 HFDL channels in a clear database format.
Mike’s software also contains a module called “GMDSS-Display” which now works similar in collecting datastream from up to seven GMDSS data streams, decoded by MultiPSK software.

Yes, also MultiPSK can be opened in many instances, each one in a sperate folder. By this way, it accepts e.g. the audio input of seven different GMDSS channels from an SDR via each different VACs, and decodes each of them.
To do so, the decoded data of each MultiSPK instance has to be backed up regularly:
Configuration -> Regular back-up -> 20 sec
Then, decoded data is automatically written into the appropriate QSO.txt file. This, in turn, is read by GMDSS-Display. Of course you first have to set the paths to guide the software to the appropriate sources.

It takes a bit time of setting it all up, but then you may run this combination until a Windows’ update forces the PC to re-boot 😉

With Mike’s development, you have a unique and mighty tool at hand for a 360° view now also in the field of GMDSS – thank you very much!

Please find below the results of a 24 hours’ session on all seven GMDSS HF channels – coast stations only, automatically drawn onto DX Atlas. All stations received in Germany with SDR FDM-S2 and MD300DX, an active vertical Megadipole of just 2 x 2.5 m of stunning performance.

DXAtlas_5

Received coastal stations on all GMDSS channel/HF during 24 hours in Germany world-wide and …

DXAtlas_6

… those with a focus onto Europe.

PC-HFDL Display: Receive, decode and analyze the biggest net on HF!

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HFDL is a net for data communications between airplanes and ground. The results can be shown on Google Earth . This screenshot shows a part of 29.000+ entries, received and processed on August 15th, 2016.

HFDL is a net for data communications between airplanes and ground. The results can be shown on Google Earth. This screenshot shows a part of 29.000+ entries, received and processed on August 15th, 2016.

 

Communications between air and ground is mostly done on VHF, UHF and SHF. But if an aircraft is out of reach of a ground station station due to the limited “radio horizon” of these bands, it has to maintain communications by either satellite or HF. This HFDL net is in fact the most massive professional user of HF right now. Within 24 hours, I get more than 40.000 live messages with a modest equipment.

With his software Display Launcher, Mike Simpson from Australia provides a most valuable tool to analyze up to nine channels in parallel. His software also draws positions and routes onto Google Earth. Mike has spent much energy on coping with many inconsistencies of transmitted data before it all really goes smoothly.

This free software is the vital part of a monitoring project to receive, demodulate and analyze live up to nine HFDL channels in parallel. Other ingredients you need is a software-defined radio (SDR), nine virtual audio cables (in fact, a piece of software) and a decoder software. Don’t forget an antenna and a PC …

This setup comprises a semi-professional monitoring station which will allow you to receive and track many of the nearly 3.000 airplanes using HFDL. This also covers the military, business jets, helicopters and some other delicate users. It maybe used as an important complement to Flightradar24’s web service, whenever their VHF/UHF/SHF-based net is out of range of the aircraft. This is particularly true over vast water masses like oceans and sparsely populated land masses. Furthermore, Flightradar24 erases some sensible flights from the raw material before publication on their website. This is clearly no “censorship”, but some thoughtfulness in regard to those countries where reception and publication of HFDL data is more tolerated than explicitly encouraged by the government.

In a 9-page PDF, I published a step-by-step recipe on how to set up such an HF monitoring station for up to nine parallel HFDL channel. You can download it here.

Decoding the whole DGPS band

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This screenshot shows the automatically visualized result of a 15 hours’ session receiving the DGPS band, March 11th/12th, 2017. You clearly see the propagation effect during night (marked yellow).

For years, Chris Smolinski of Black Cat Systems offers a fine selection of Mac software, among them many pieces for hams and shortwave listeners.

He now presented an unique software dubbed Amalgamated DGPS which decodes, analyzes and visualizes all DGPS stations on long wave at once. This is done from an I/Q wav file of e.g. Perseus SDR. DGPS stand for “Differential Global Positioning System” and is a system of long wave transmitters in the range of 283,5 to 324,5 kHz transmitting FSK data in 100 and 200 Baud to correct for GPS signals. Look here for a short introduction to this topic.

[Einen deutschsprachigen Test der aktualisierten Software habe ich in der April- Ausgabe 2017 der Fachzeitschrift FUNKAMATEUR veröffentlicht.]

These transmitters are of regional coverage, like non-directional beacons, or NDB, in the same band. This makes them interesting for DXing and propagation studies as well.

All you have to do is to let the software analyze your I/Q files of a receiving sessions. Yes, it is automatically “chaining” your files. You then get a detailed list of decoded stations with some additional data. You also can visualize these data, as I did in the screenshot at the top. This is based on a 15 hours’ session resulting in 56 wav files of 675 MB each.

The software runs on both, Mac/iOS and Windows. On both systems it works fine, covering .0 and .5 kHz channels as well as both baud rates.

Here you see the complete list of stations and the number of their receptions. “Amalgamated DGPS” has decoded 516.918 logs in roughly 15 hours!

 

Monitoring, State-of-the-Art: In a Nutshell

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As I was asked for a look onto my monitoring workbench, I decided to write it down. It’s not to show “the real stone”, but an invitation for discussing efficient workflows which State-of-the-Art technology has to offer.

This PDF of 13 pages contains 25 hopefully instructive illustrations to comprehend my approach to monitoring; or, in this case: Utility DXing. Part of this PDF is also a 2:50 video, showing how to stroll between aero channels and to decode ALE. This video is also placed on top of this page.

The paper explains in detail the advantages of leafing through recorded HF files using the technology of the “living sonogram”. It also discusses some efficient strategies of voice and data reception, eventually touching even documentation.

To make use of the video content, download it on your hard disk, save it and open it by the most recent version of your PDF reader. It works on a PC as well as on a Mac. You can download it here.

Utility DX: Some (actually: 1.000+) Logs, June, 2016

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Part of the EXCEL list

Part of the EXCEL list

“HF for the pros is stone-dead, isn’t it?” This rather verdict than question is often heard even by hams. If you are telling them how busy the bands really are (as they cannot read about that in their magazines), they are doubting: “But you need professional equipment plus decoding software, worth my Mercedes Benz?”, they are upset by the answer: “Absolutely bullshit. A software-defined radio at 500 US-$ plus some free software will produce thousands of logs!”

Still don’t believe that? Well, here is the first thousand, caught just in the first half of June, 2016. Received with an FDM-S2 receiver at a quadloop of 20 m of circumference. I mostly concentrated on fixed (rather than: mobile) stations and of modes which can be decoded with free software – if they are not even outright SSB or CW.

You can download this log: Logs_EXCEL from where it may easily be opened not only by EXCEL, but also e.g. free LibreOffice.
If I find time, even more logs from the same HF recordings will be added.

I am greatly indebted to the busy and resourceful friends of UDXF for their work, thanks.

20 MHz HF: “HackRF One” on Shortwave

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world Kopie

The world is full of software-defined radio (SDR), but HackRF One has a rather unique position – thanks to its vast maximum bandwidth of 20 MHz. With an up-converter, this combination covers more than 70 percent of the whole HF range from 3 to 30 MHz. Even better: with proper software you can record and play this enormous band!

However, this stunning bandwidth is achieved by a moderate resolution of 8 bit, resulting in a dynamic range of just nearly 50 dB. Or the half of SDRs like Elad’s FDM-S2.

Anyway. I wanted to know in practice what you can actually do with such a set at a budget price plus mostly free software. The results surprised even me: Properly used, this combination convinced as a quite decent performer on HF! The world map above shows some of the stations received with the set (see insert bottom left) to test its performance.

I laid down my experiences and recommendations for best reception in a paper of 17 multi-media pages full of examples – including 55 screenshots, 21 audio clips and one video. The PDF shows how to optimize reception of broadcast, utility and amateur radio stations. It covers many examples on how to analyze recordings, to decode data transmission with free software plus live decoding of 14 channels in parallel. It also gives some examples of combining HF reception with the internet, e.g. regarding the reception of signals from airplanes (ARINC, HFDL) and vessels (GMDSS).

My experiences really left me enthusiastic about this set.

You may share this enthusiasm and download the PDF of 43 MB here. Save it on your hard disk or USB stick, and open it with a most recent Adobe Reader. Otherwise, the multimedia content will not work.
[Einen deutschsprachigen Test  habe ich jeweils als Titelgeschichte in der April- Ausgabe 2017 der Fachzeitschrift  Radio-Kurier – weltweit hören und in der Mai-Ausgabe der Fachzeitschrift Funktelegramm veröffentlicht.]

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