A monitoring tool for HF frequency management and license enforcement

This paper describes a radio receiving system for monitoring the HF spectrum for the purposes of frequency management and license enforcement. The system, which is under development at Ebor Computing in Adelaide Australia, is nearing completion and is anticipated to provide functionality far surpassing the conventional receiver. Important characteristics of the system are direction finding in azimuth and elevation, signal enhancement, signal tracking, and feature/parameter extraction for modulation recognition. One key attribute is that the system is scaleable. So that, by adding or subtracting modules the system can monitor more or less of the HF spectrum. The project is now entering a stage of testing against skywave signals. The testing is expected to be complete by the end of 2006.