High Frequency (HF) Radio Automated Link Establishment (ALE)

The advent of Automatic Link Establishment has significantly increased the utility and ease of use of high frequency radio communications. However, the cost to replace all legacy HF communications equipment with ALE capable radios is prohibitively high.To provide a low-cost solution to add ALE capability to existing HF radios, CTI will investigate and define the requirements and high-level design, for a Software-based ALE application which utilizes commercial-off-the-shelf PC hardware; yielding an ALEStandards compliant, robust, reliable ALE Controller.The system will interoperate seamlessly with existing ALE radios and controllers, while compensating for the limitations of the non-ALE radios it controls. By providing a low-cost means of bringing the vast number of non-ALE HF radios into the ALE realm,significant benefit will be provided to both Navy and private sector operations. There are a large number of non-ALE capable HF radios in use today. Without an experienced operator the time to establish a link to another station can be excessive. The Software ALE System will allow large numbers of legacy HF radios to utilizeAutomatic Link Establishment, resulting in greatly increased connectivity for both voice and data communications. The inherent low-cost nature of this innovation will result in wide-spread adoption of Software ALE by large numbers of military, commercial,and private HF Communications users. Significant benefits in the form of vastly improved communications for disaster relief agencies, homeland defense, humanitarian aid agencies, regulatory agencies, and the military may be realized.