Communications Electronic Warfare

What you will learn

On successful completion of this module you should be able to:

• identify the main electronic surveillance (ES) and electronic attack threats (EA) to a communications system and propose defensive measures to reduce the impact of these threat, 
• explain the main analysis methods employed in communications EW in the time, spectral and spatial domains,
• analyse and evaluate the impact of electronic attack on a communications network using a power budget and quantify the effect of electronic defence measures.

Core content

Introduction to communications electronic warfare

• electronic attack,
• surveillance and defence.

Electronic attack

• jamming techniques and effects,
• calculation of SJNR,
• jamming of satellite and ground-based links,
• GPS vulnerability.

Electronic defence

• ED methods (burst transmission, antenna null-steering, error control, spread-spectrum techniques).

Comms EW receivers

• requirements,
• sensitivity and dynamic range of intercept receivers,
• communications ESM receiver types (swept superhet, channelized, FFT-based channelised)

Direction-finding

• DF techniques (DF loop, Adcock antenna, rotary DF systems, interferometers, time difference of arrival method, pseudo-Doppler techniques, amplitude comparison methods).

Commercial DF and military EW systems

• visiting lecturers from Rohde and Schwartz,
• geolocation.

Military tactical data links

• a case study of high-level EW protection applied to a military data network.

Spectral estimation

• classical and parametric methods,
• eigenvector-based methods.

Upgrade to a professional qualification

When taken as a Short Course for Credit, 10 credit points can be put towards the Communications Electronic Warfare PgCert or the Military Electronic Systems Engineering MSc.

Find out more about short course credit points.

Who should attend

Students must have completed Communication Principles, Communication Systems, Electromagnetic Propagation and Devices and Signal Processing, Statistics and Analysis in order to take this as an Short Course for Credit. There are no prerequisites if taken as a Standalone Short Course.

Speakers

Dr Peter Barker

Concessions

Location and travel

Cranfield Defence and Security (CDS) is a Cranfield School based at the Ministry of Defence establishment on the Oxfordshire/Wiltshire borders.

Shrivenham itself lies in the picturesque Vale of the White Horse, close to the M4 motorway which links London and South Wales. It is 7 miles from Swindon, the nearest town, which lies off the M4 at the hub of Britain’s motorway network.

Bath, Cheltenham, Bristol and Oxford are all within an hour’s drive and London less than two hours away by car.

All visitors must be pre-booked in at reception by the person they are visiting on the campus.

For further location and travel details