Agilent E3238 Signal Interceptand Collection SolutionsFamily OverviewInternational Edition

Deploy Quicker, Produce Faster

Explosive growth in the number and variety of wireless and satellitecommunications technologies pose an ever-increasing challenge within theglobal intelligence and homeland security community.

Signal surveillance and technical security mission managers are tasked tointercept and collect the precise information content required for decisionmakers. This task can no longer be accomplished with technology designed forlegacy narrowband transmissions schemes. A new wideband architecture andautomated interception and collection tools are required to increase theprobability of intercept and mission success.

Agilent's diverse technology base provides a decisive edge in creatingtechnologies for next-generation surveillance solutions. Agilent's intimateinvolvement and experience in wireless communication systems design and testyields early insight into the kinds of signals that our customers need to deal withtoday - and early insight into threats that will challenge them tomorrow.

Agilent E3238Family of SignalIntercept andCollection Solutions

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Agilent E3238 Family BenefitsAdaptability & Connection to Legacy Systems

Optional user-programming softwareadapts the E3238 platform to yoursituation. Displays can be customized toincrease productivity and set upmission-specific profiles. The family alsointegrates with legacy resourcesincluding hand-off receivers anddirection finding systems. Networkconnectivity via sockets provides fastinter-system communication.

Support

The family is based upon commercialproducts and is easy to buy, maintain,and support. The E3238 arrives witheverything pre-installed and ready torun. Because the E3238 family isstandards-based, your investment isprotected. As technology ramps, so canyour system. If your mission requiresyou to survey the frequency spectrum todetermine the nature of unknownemitters, the 35688E option 113 SignalSurveyor is the value leader in ourfamily of solutions.

Typical intercept and collection solutionconsists of:

1 Windows based PC withStandard Application Software

2 Choice of industry standard VXI mainframe (4, 5, 6 and 13 slots available)

3 A set of modular, VXI based signal acquisition and processing hardware

4 A specific suite of software tools foryour mission (modulation recognition shown)

5 Tailoring to add links to customer legacy systems (direction finding shown)

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Whether your needs are to quickly findand log signal activity, or to find,recognize, demodulate and processsignals to create meaningful intelligence,the family of E3238 systems includes asolution for you. The E3238's widebandarchitecture provides fast sweep ratesand high dynamic range to significantlyincrease the probability of intercept. Withthe E3238 family, searches produce morehits quicker than manually operatednarrowband systems.

Automation

The E3238 family automates commontasks so an operator can focus on themission at hand and quickly accomplishmission goals. It allows highly skilledoperators to set automated missionstates for other less skilled operators.The system can even run in remotelocations or unattended.

Applications

Agilent continuously adds applicationsto the E3238 family. This applicationflexibility increases life span and re-useof E3238-based solutions, lowering lifecycle costs compared to purpose-builtor "stovepipe" systems.

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Designed to speed Intercept and Collection tasks and increase probability ofintercept (POI):

1 Cockpit control of all systems assets from antennas to digital receiversvia the system icon bar

2 A variety of signal visualization tools speed analysis.

3 Operators eyes never leave the signal of interest while they interact directlywith trace data to control assets like drop receivers, Modulation Recognition, andDirection Finding systems

4 Automated alarms, thresholding and alerts automate the task of keeping trackof incoming signals

5 Signals Database automatically logs all signals of interest for historical use

6 Per-channel view into signal processing activity and asset usage

7 Integration with legacy systems completes the solution, shown here with Direction Finding results

8 Quickly identify unknown emitters with the Modulation Recognition option

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Agilent E3238 Family Benefits

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Signal Intercept and Collection Solutions Family

• Extremely fast, high resolution spectral search

• Multiple search modes – F1-F2,Directed Search, Stare

• Advanced energy thresholding –Level, Noise Riding, Environmental

• New-energy database simplifiescataloging spectrum survey results

• Available in both HF and V/UHF solution

• Up to 6 GHz frequency range with36MHz bandwidth

• Adds a significant set of HF ALEspecific detection algorithms andanalysis tools to the E3238 platform

• Reliably detect and decode MIL-STD-188-141 HF-ALEcommunications

• Intercept and collect push-to-talkvoice communications

• Integrated suite of automated toolsto detect and demodulate multiplevoice signals in the band of interest

• Improves voice detection speed

• Can be integrated tightly withcommon direction finding solutionsto create a complete detection andgeolocation solution

• Multi-linguist support to accessand play back recorded messages

PAGER

• Automates the tedious task ofsearching for and interceptingpager signals

• Pager signals are automaticallyintercepted, demodulated, decoded,and recorded into a database

• Reports summarize the results ofthe find operation in a concisechronological report

• Automatic report generation

EXPANDABILITY

The Agilent E3238 Family is designedaround an industry-standard platformthat continuously expands to meetemerging mission requirements.

Signal Surveyor The entry-level signal search and detection solution

HF ALE Automatic Link Establishment intercept solution

VHF/UHF VADS Voice Activity Detection System for the V/UHF Spectrum

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The basic search system controls thesystem tuner, Analog to Digital Convertor(ADC) and G4 based DSP hardware toprovide industry leading performanceand high probability of intercept ofunknown/unwanted emitters.

If your mission requires you to surveythe frequency spectrum to determinethe nature of unknown emitters, the35688E option 113 Signal Surveyor is thevalue leader in our family of solutions.

Currently many users tasked with signalsurvey are buying many individual piecesof test equipment, including spectrumanalyzers and other devices. Often,customers end up writing customsoftware and struggling to createdatabases for their collected signals.Signal Surveyor is a transportablesolution for unknown wireless emitteridentification. The Signal Surveyorprovides an extremely powerful, highspeed portable V/UHF Signal survey anddatabase collection and creation tool.

The Signal Surveyor Solution speedsresults by supplying all the necessarymeasurement acquisition hardware andautomated signal processing tools inone complete portable solution.

Features such as signal thresholding andtriggering along with complete energyhistory databases and sophisticatedsignal visualization capabilities speed thetask of surveying and understanding theRF spectrum. The 35688E-113 SignalSurveyor software provides an entry levelsignal search solution for slightly morethan the cost of a traditional sweptspectrum analyzer and its associatedlaptop and software tools. The SignalSurveyor solution also has an upgradepath to the full intercept and collectioncapabilities of the other solutions in theE3238 family.

Signal Surveyor(Agilent 35688E-113)

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Signal Surveyor Feature Summary

• Frequency coverage - three tunersavailable, HF, V/UHF or Microwave

• Up to 36MHz instantaneousbandwidth

• Fast, high resolution spectral search

• Multiple search modes – F1-F2,Directed, Stare

• Advanced energy thresholding –Level, Noise Riding, Environmental

• New-energy database simplifiescataloging spectrum survey results

• Automated energy alarms basedupon database parameters

• Control of external handoffreceivers, 18 different modelsavailable

• Optional Modulation Recognition Tool

• Data compatible with 89600 VectorSignal Analyzer

Scheduling and New EnergyClassification Tools

Select the scheduling that fits theapplication and configure alarms toactivate automatically. Multiple signalevents can be combined into a singlealarm. The alarms function canautomatically identify energy of interestin the energy history database and takeaction on it. The alarm criteria can beset based on the externalcharacteristics or features of the signalsuch as:

Signal parameters

• Frequency

• Amplitude

• Bandwidth

Signal state

• New signal

• Any signal

• Signal no longer there

Signal activity

• Duration

• Intercept time

• Occupancy

The environment threshold subtracts ambient signals and noise from the Agilent E3238display and simplifies the task of finding new signals.

The energy history database automatically stores the parameters of all energy abovethe threshold. Summary tables and standard plots are built into this function.

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For customers who need to specificallyintercept and collect push-to-talk voicecommunications in the VHF/UHFfrequency bands, the Agilent VHF/UHFVoice Activity Detection System providesan integrated suite of automated tools toreliably detect and demodulate multiplevoice signals in the band of interest.Agilent Technologies' patent-pending

VHF/UHF Voice ActivityDetection System(35688E-VA2)

technology dramatically reduces falsepositive identifications common withother systems that only use single-passfrequency-domain techniques

In addition, this system can be integratedtightly with popular common directionfinding solutions to create a completedetection and geolocation solution.

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Time-domain test for voice, with recording to disk

Key features

• VHF/UHF frequency coverage

• Automatically identifies language-and speaker-independent FM voice channels

• 96 channels of narrowband voicedetection with built-in recording

• Records voice channels to systemdisk, or LAN disks for use bymultiple linguists

• Automatic up/down signaldetection records the entire signalwithout wasting disk space

• Voice signals are time stamped

• Works in conjunction withSnapshot Radio software todemodulate and play back savedvoice channels

• Saved voice signals can bedemodulated and saved as .wav or .16t files for easy access andusability across computer platforms

Snapshot Radio

Snapshot radio is a separate softwaretool that allows linguists using PCs onthe system LAN to independentlydemodulate and listen to voice channelfiles saved by the VADS. E3238acquisition hardware is not required toplayback files. Several linguists canremotely access the files simultaneously,increasing productivity. For moreinformation about Snapshot Radio seethe Snapshot Radio datasheet, availablefrom your Agilent applications engineer.

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At one time, those who wished tocommunicate over long-haul distancesusing the HF spectrum needed to beskilled radio operators, knowledgeablein HF propagation characteristics. In themiddle of the last decade however, HFRadio technology gained a significantadvantage with the introduction of HFAutomatic Link Establishment (HF ALE). This new standard was developed toautomatically select an HF frequencythat would support a communicationslink between stations in a network orpoint-to-point without operatorassistance. Governments around theworld quickly adopted this standard andcurrently use HF ALE radios for long-haul communications.

Visualize HF ALE networks graphically - The "callogram" displaysHF ALE intercepts showing link activity over time and frequency.Callograms are one of the many Agilent exclusive visualizationtools in the HF ALE Intercept Solution that reveal the usage patterns in the HF ALE networks.

The wideband search and narrowbandcollection capabilities of the E3238Platform are perfectly suited to reliablydetect and decode MIL-STD-188-141HF-ALE communications. This solutionadds a significant set of HF ALE-specific detection algorithms andanalysis tools to the platform toautomate the interception, collectionand reporting about of communicationsin HF ALE networks.

HF ALE Intercept Solution(35688E-AL9)

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For customers with a mission thatrequires intercept and collection of"pager communications" the AgilentPager Intercept Solution automates thetedious task of searching for andintercepting pager signals, collectingand storing their content and finallysearching that content for the specifictext content of interest.

Pager signals are automaticallyintercepted, demodulated, decoded, andrecorded into a database. Over 100,000"pages"per hour can be recorded. Users

can define alarms that search for newpager messages, for specific capcodes,pager parameters, and paging contentincluding words, phrases, or numberscontained in the actual ASCII messages.Reports summarize the results of thesearch operation in a concisechronological report. The system can beoperated remotely or left for unattendedoperation. A variety of pager formats areavailable and because the system isbased upon open architecturestandards, new pager signal types maybe added by our consulting engineers.

Pager Intercept Solution(35688E-PG1)

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Designed for the most demandingSignal Intelligence and TechnicalSecurity missions, the AgilentTechnologies E3238 family of solutionsutilizes an FFT-based fast-scanning, highselectivity receiver subsystem withmanual and automatic tools to detectand isolate signals of interest in densewireless signal environments.

The E3238‘s acquisition platformprovides extremely high sweep rates(>10GHz/second) and high dynamicrange to capture elusive signals.When coupled with the signalprocessing and automated softwarealgorithms, these solutionssignificantly increase the probability ofintercept of unknown emitters.

E3238 Signal Intercept and Collection Platform

By selecting different mainframes andmodules a variety of mission specificsystems may be built. Pictured are threeexample configurations:

1 VHF/UHF Signal Surveyor system

2 VHF/UHF Search and 96 Channel Collection System

3 HF Search and 128 Channel Collection and Recording System

VXI Tuners are also available formicrowave frequency ranges.1 2 3

E3238 Features and Functions

- Wideband stepped FFT architecture- Exceptionally fast high-resolution hardware- Multiple Search Modes

- Automatic signal classifier functions- Innovative user interface designs- Variety of tools tailored to market needs

- Industry Standard VXI/COTS Platform- Standards-based software environment- Commercially developed solution

- Basic system available off the shelf- Based upon commercially

available hardware- GSA schedule availability- Standard and custom User Training Classes

- Modular Architecture both in hardware and software

- Documented open programming capability- Legacy integration services available

- Access to Agilent measurement expertise- Appropriate security resources and spaces

Primary Benefits

Increases Probability ofIntercept (POI) for target signals

Increases productivity ofoperators

Lowers deployment andmaintenance costs

Easy and quick to purchase and deploy

High re-use in future missions

Leverage Agilent's commercialproduct investments

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Intercept solutions may include both Search and Collection assets depending upon themission and application requirements.

E3238 Simplified Block Diagram

Core Search System Software

The main user interface and controlsoftware 35688E uses a wide-bandstepped FFT technique to achieveexceptionally fast scanning whilemaintaining high resolution and widedynamic range. The search functionalityis designed to find and collectinformation on wireless communicationssignals. It controls the antennaswitching, tuners (or down convertors)and other acquisition hardware and thecore system DSP. Modular hardwareensures solutions that cover thespectrum from DC-60 GHz (dependingon the tuner installed) with sweep ratesof up to 10 GHz per second acrossmultiple antennas.

Adding Collection Hardware andSoftware

A complete search and collectionsolution is created through additionalsignal processing and software definedradio receivers to the system. Softwaredefined receivers can quickly bedownloaded with new energy detectionand demodulation algorithms fordifferent types of emitters. Agilent isconstantly updating the number andtypes of signal collection tools in ourlibrary. Custom signal types may bedeveloped by Agilent or other contractorsfor your precise solution requirements.

Optional Software Tools

We are continually improving the baseplatform and adding new software toolsto our family. The E3238 family includesa suite of optional application tools thatenhance the functionality of the systemfor specific missions and target emitters.

Model Number Description Function

E9051A-430

35688E-MR1

35688E-ASM*

35688E-NBR*

35688E-AU1*

35688E-FMR*

35688E-PLR*

Snapshot Radio

Modulation Recognition

Feature studio

Narrowband recorder

Real-time audio

FM signal recognizer

CTCSS signal recognizer

Playback AM/FM/SSBrecordings using advancedcontrols for linguists

Provides a software tool thatdetermines the type ofmodulation used for a given signal

Graphical tool to create spectral shape filters

Provides a multi-channel digitalrecorder for the system

Adds realtime audio outputs tothe specific E3238 solution

Detects and records any FMsignal, voice or data

Detects and records FM signalsthat have user-specified sub-audible tones.

* Requires that users purchase or upgrade base search software to 35688E-103 Standard E3238 Software for Windowsand purchase the associated collection hardware.

Expert Application & ConfigurationAssistance

In addition to the platform solutionsdiscussed earlier, Agilent Technologieshas developed a large base of personnelwith application expertise in signalprocessing and signal analysis. TheAgilent applications engineers areavailable to help define a clear statementof work and concept of operations. Thisconsultation process helps you configurethe best value solution.

Support and Sparing Strategy

Agilent has the capability to help youdefine and implement both local andglobal support and sparing strategies foryour solutions.

Training and Deployment

When it is time to deploy systems,Agilent Applications Engineers areavailable to offer either Standard orCustom training classes for your team.These training classes can be heldeither on-site or at Agilent officesworldwide.

Maintenance and Updates

The E3238 platform is designed upon aflexible, industry-based openarchitecture and is kept up to date withcontinuous investments and revisionsusing internally funded R&Dinvestments. Our platforms andsoftware solutions are designedfollowing rigorous processes. To helpyou get the best value from yourinvestment, software update servicesare available for all of our solutions.The core system software updateservices are a standard GSA product.For custom solutions, Agilent canprovide you with a specific maintenanceagreement upon your request.

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Fielding and Supporting your Solutions

Applications and missions areconstantly changing. Agilent tailoredsolutions blend the best of ourcommercial R&D investments with theprogram management skills to create asolution tailored to your critical needs.In addition to the solutions described inthis brochure, Agilent ProgramManagers are able to define and deliversolutions customized for your needs.

To help you meet your changingmission requirements, AgilentTechnologies has also invested inteams of extremely skilled signalprocessing experts with the requiredclearances and workspaces to aid youin defining and implementing completesolutions to your pressing problems.

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Platform Tailoring andCustomization Services

Agilent uses our Solution Life Cycleprocess to manage the definition andcreation of solutions for customers.The Solution Lifecycle is flexible andscalable yet provides ISO approvedguidelines, templates and worksheetsthat can be adapted to the specificprogram. Extensive programmanagement capabilities, processesand expertise are employed on everyproject to ensure Agilent createdsolutions meet technical, schedule andbudgetary requirements.

Agilent Technologies’ Test and MeasurementSupport, Services, and Assistance

Agilent Technologies aims to maximize the valueyou receive, while minimizing your risk andproblems. We strive to ensure that you get thetest and measurement capabilities you paid forand obtain the support you need. Our extensivesupport resources and services can help youchoose the right Agilent products for yourapplications and apply them successfully. Everyinstrument and system we sell has a globalwarranty. Support is available for at least fiveyears beyond the production life of the product.Two concepts underlie Agilent’s overall supportpolicy: “Our Promise” and “Your Advantage.”

Our Promise

Our Promise means your Agilent test andmeasurement equipment will meet its advertisedperformance and functionality. When you arechoosing new equipment, we will help you withproduct information, including realisticperformance specifications and practicalrecommendations from experienced testengineers. When you use Agilent equipment, wecan verify that it works properly, help withproduct operation, and provide basicmeasurement assistance for the use of specifiedcapabilities, at no extra cost upon request. Manyself-help tools are available.

Your Advantage

Your Advantage means that Agilent offers awide range of additional expert test andmeasurement services, which you can purchaseaccording to your unique technical and businessneeds. Solve problems efficiently and gain acompetitive edge by contracting with us forcalibration, extra-cost upgrades, out-of-warrantyrepairs, and onsite education and training, aswell as design, system integration, projectmanagement, and other professionalengineering services. Experienced Agilentengineers and technicians worldwide can helpyou maximize your productivity, optimize thereturn on investment of your Agilentinstruments and systems, and obtaindependable measurement accuracy for the lifeof those products.

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