To catch a spy--spy! (Digest).

Covert agents rely on a military standard for communications security--frequency-hopping radios. Frequency hopping breaks the signal into small packets and transmits these on different frequencies according to a pre-arranged pattern. If the pattern is known, one can follow the signal and receive the complete message, but without this hopping code the entire message is lost in the general radio noise. RF engines has developed a new tool to build radio receivers that are capable of picking these signals out of the background noise. The technology, called Pipelined Frequency Transform (PFT) architecture, enables sigint receivers to scan a wide section of the spectrum (up to 100 MHz) in real time. PFT technology can be fitted onto a single silicon chip and provides conversion and filtering of channels (from a few to many thousand) in real-time with all channel signals being available for onward processing. It enables what previously took a stack of digital frequency converters to be replaced with a single chip. PFT can identify and focus in on small, rapidly moving signals, locking onto them so their data can be recorded and studied. In light of this development RF Engines has recently signed a design and licensing deal with an undisclosed American defence contractor valued at $ 1.5 million over a five-year period. (RFE)

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