28 October 2022

Rohde & Schwarz's SigBadger emerges at AUSA

by Giles Ebbutt

The Rohde & Schwarz SigBadger control vehicle displayed at AUSA 22, with its roof and mast-mounted ADDx multichannel DF antennas. (Giles Ebbutt)

Rohde & Schwarz (R&S) has developed a mobile system to provide electronic warfare awareness training and support for ground force exercises, which it provides as a training service to the US Marine Corps (USMC) at the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Centre (MCAGCC) at 29 Palms in California.

The SigBadger system consists of two vehicles, each with signals intelligence (SIGINT) capability. According to R&S documentation, this consists of direction finding (DF) and geolocation in the 300 kHz–6 GHz frequency band; signal analysis and spectrum monitoring of more than 300 kHz–26.500 GHz; and electronic intelligence (ELINT) of more than 20 MHz–40 GHz. The two vehicles have identical capabilities but only one is manned by operators, who exercise remote control over the equipment, in the other vehicle, which only needs a driver.

R&S showcased the SigBadger capability at the Association of the United States Army (AUSA) 2022 annual convention in Washington, DC, in October, displaying the control vehicle, which contains a suite of intercept and analysis equipment plus two operator workstations.

The vehicle is equipped with a R&S DDF550 wideband DF along with a further receiver and has two R&S ADDx multichannel DF antennas, one mast- and the other roof-mounted.

The DDF550 provides a high DF-scan speed with an 80 MHz real-time bandwidth, giving a high probability of intercepting and locating short-duration and frequency-agile signals. It is integrated with the R&S CA120 multichannel signal analysis software, which provides automatic multichannel detection, classification, demodulation, and decoding of signals.

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