Results of new automatic link establishment and maintenance techniques for HF radio systems

This paper considers the factors which affect the time required to automatically establish links over high frequency (HF) radio channels. Procedures for automatic link establishment (ALE) are described which can reduce these times while providing increased functionality over existing ALE implementations. Automatic link maintenance (ALM) techniques which allow the matching of an adaptive data link to current channel conditions, and the use of embedded real-time channel evaluation (RTCE) information to monitor such changes is also discussed.