Telestra 3 App Note

MBV Radio Monitor Application (#71)

Getting Started

Select Radio Monitor under the Tools menu in MBV. This will open to the Network Transmitters page of the Radio Environment. Use the shift and plus/minus (+/–) keys (number pad only) to expand or reduce the window size. The screen will display all of the radios on Exercise ID 1 (or the Exercise with the lowest ID number with radios). This page is useful when troubleshooting to see what radios are transmitting on the network. The radios are sorted by Radio ID by default; press the 'f' key to sort them by frequency.

Each radio displays the following details:

• Object: The object number of the radio within the model in MBV. Only local radios will have object numbers.
• Radio ID: The IDs are composed of site, host, entity, and radio IDs. The four set string is site:host:entity:radio (for example 117.1.1.22) and must be unique for each radio on the network. While there is not a steadfast rule for setting up the IDs, one common scenario is to associate the site and host IDs with physical location, the entity ID with the Telestra and then have individual radio IDs for each instance.
• State: Displays the transmit state of the radio. Valid states are OFF, Not Transmitting, In-Tune [N], and Transmitting. In the 'OFF' state the radio is turned off in the model. In the 'Not Transmitting' state the radio is turned ON, however it is not in-tune with any of the local radios. In the 'In-Tune' state the radio is In-Tune with other local radios. In the 'Transmitting' state the radio is actively transmitting. Additionally, there is a network designation character that is placed in front of the state; '~' is for HLA, '^' is for backchannel, and '_' indicates that the radio is local and not networked.
• Frequency/Channel: Displays the frequency or channel number in Hertz. If the frequency is high enough, a 'k' for kilohertz or an 'M' for megahertz will appear.
• Modulation: Displays a brief summary of the modulation state of the radio. The summary consists of 4 numbers separated by decimal points representing the spread spectrum state of the radio, the major modulation type, the detail modulation type, and the system type (for example 1.3.1.2 for FM frequency hopping radio). All of the values here are defined by the DIS standard.
• Bandwidth: Displays the bandwidth of the radio signal. The bandwidth is centered on the radio frequency.

Radio Monitor has several other pages and commands for looking at radio lists, some are listed on the command bars at the bottom of the window such as 'q' to quit Radio Monitor. Note that most commands in Radio Monitor are toggles; in most situations pressing the same key a second time will cause the application to revert to the previous state. Other available commands include:

• Radio Detail Page - Use the up and down arrows to select a radio and then press Enter. A new screen will show all of the information that is contained in the Transmitter PDU. Press Enter again to return to the list of radios.

  

• Toggle Radio Names - Use the 'i' key to view the Radio Names. The Radio ID tag is replaced with the name of the radio set inside of the MBV model. Note that this will only work for local radios.

• PDU Statistics - Use the 's' key to view the stats page for the radio list (valid only for local radio lists). Various counters will display the number of PDUs sent and received by the radio based on type.

  

• Propagation Statistics - Use the 'p' key to view the propagation page for the radio list (valid only for local radio lists). Radio Monitor will display the types of propagation that each radio is using, either Range, Occulting, Ionosphere, and/or Terrain.

  

• Toggle HLA - Press the 'a' key to view the lists of HLA radios.

• Change Exercise ID - Press the Tab and Shift + Tab keys to increment and decrement the DIS Exercise ID. Radio Monitor will only jump to exercises with radios and will not change if there is only one exercise.

• In-Tune and In-Tune Detail Pages - When the cursor selects a radio use the right arrow to display the local receivers that are in-tune with that radio; pressing the right arrow again will load the in-tune detail page as shown below. When viewing the In-Tune page, Radio Monitor will indicate MIX_OK if the two radios are communicating properly. Otherwise the state will display one of the following errors: no signal, spread-spectrum mismatch, crypto mismatch, mode mismatch, jamming, or out-of-range.

  

  Figure 7: The In-Tune and In-Tune Detail pages of Radio Monitor - Click to open in a new window.