Advanced use of LQA data in improving the quality and the speed of ALE link establishment while reducing sounding requirements in HF networks

The goal of an automatic link establishment (ALE) system is to assist the user of a HF transceiver to establish a link with an outstation by automatically selecting an appropriate channel. For users that are untrained in HF propagation, this is an extremely critical requirement. However, it was discovered that the first generation of ALE controllers that implemented the FED-STD-1045 standard were unable to operate consistently in any given HF network due to a range of issues. This paper discusses a number of those issues and a number of novel approaches in dealing with them.