Why I think this is Harris rather than Thales

I think this signal is the Harris "RF-5800 selective call" waveform, parameters as the speed, modulation and ACF fit fine, although they are the same than Thales Systeme-3000 ALE (pic. 1): unfortunately these two ALE signals have the same OTA parameters but not compatible at binary level due to proprietary adds.

This argument was already discussed here and this time I have an almost safe argument in favour of the 'Harris' identification: if you look at the signal you may see some voice segments and listening to them reveals a radio-check, in Spanish, between the operators callsigns "mercurio" and "830", briefly:

- 830 from mercurio k

- here mercurio, how copy me k

As you can see in the link below, "mercurio" is a Communications (HF and VHF) BMR in service in the Spanish Army (BMR 3560.56, aka "BMR Mercurio 2000"):
http://www.ejercito.mde.es/en/unidades/Las_Palmas/ciatrans16/Organizacion/materiales/index.html 

But more likely, from searches in the web, "mercurio 2000" could also be the name of a set of communications equipment that is installed in vehicles of the Spanish Army such as Vamtac, BMR or even Land Rover (!):

http://www.coches.net/land-rover-santana-militar-mercurio-transmisiones-en-barcelona-30766415-ccvo.aspx 

Now, download this pdf and take a look at page 10: the new VAMTAC will replace MERCURIO comm-vehicles starting from Jan 2013, and just below the picture you can read a mention just about the Harris RF-5800 that is used as HF equipment set (pic. 2): 

http://www.ejercito.mde.es/Galerias/multim edia/boletines/2013/Boletin_Tierra_209.pdf 

So:

- since these new VAMTAC vehicles are equipped with Harris RF-5800 

- since the communication vehicles seen above belong to the same (mil) network

there is no reason because "MERCURIO" should use (or be) a different proprietary equipement (as Thales, in this case) that would cause  interoperability issues inside the comm. network.

It remains to observe, in my opinion, that while logging these signals it's hard to say Harris rather than Thales, and vice-versa, without some other useful item such as an on line chat (as in this case) or a well-known working frequency.

Pic. 1

Pic. 2

Harris RF-5800 'Selective Call', MSK 2000Bd/1000

('Systeme3000-ALE' equivocation)

 

(AngazU,I56578)

We recently had the opportunity to get and study the Harris Selective Call waveform (we name it as Harris-ALE but it's not its official name!): it's an MSK modulation at 2000 Baud speed, followed by short MFSK-8 125 Baud in non-standard MS-188-141A (ALE), acf is 50 ms (100 bit). We focused on the initial 3 seconds segment in order to define modulation mode and other features in order to help to clarify the above misunderstanding (see later).

At first glance it looks like a serial-tone signal: carrier frequency 1600 Hz and OQPSK modulation at 2000 Bd speed (pic. 1). As reported in this article by Sergey Makarov (SergUA6) http://signals.radioscanner.ru/info/item281/ "it is not easy to tell apart between QPSK and MSK since they are tightly connected".

Pic. 1- Harris Selective Call and its phase-plane

By measuring the main parameters of the signal we had (pic.2):

baudrate (Br) = 2000 Bd

bandwidth (Bw) ~ 3000 Hz

shift (Sh) = 1000 Hz

Pic. 2

That said, and according to what reported here http://signals.radioscanner.ru/info/item68/ we are pretty sure that the Harris Selective Call is not an OQPSK but rather an MSK 2000/1000 waveform, 2000Baud speed and 1000Hz shifted. As it is clearly visible in pic.2, are verified those relationships that are specific to MKS signals, i.e.: Bw = 1.5 Br and Sh = Br/2 as shown in the cited article (pic.3):

Pic. 3 - MSK relationships (from radioscanner.ru)

  
Moreover, into the Harris signal, there is another clue that points to MSK. As you can see in the picture 4, there is a long state staying in one frequency, if should it be PSK, the frequency should come back to carrier and stay there till a new phase change. 

 

Pic. 4

 The shape of the eye diagram (pic. 5) also points in this direction (MSK with BT = 0.3):

Pic. 5

The Harris signal has an ACF value of 50 mSec (100 bit) and it is characterized by the presence of what looks like a signature, something like a 'business card':

  

As said, this is a safe-origin signal since it was recordered some years ago during Harris RF-5800 acceptance tests: at that time it was supposed to be standard in Falcon-II series radios. Harris equipment is wide spread in NATO countries, but this mode, although available, seems to be not much used.

With these points in mind, we asked ourselves the question that we indicated at the beginning: the so-called Thales “Systeme3000-ALE” (reported also in a post on this blog) has a waveform that is very similar to the Harris-ALE' one, also aurally they just sound in the same way. Browsing the web, there are logs by listeners reporting both the signals: altought the Thales waveform be almost 99.99% OQPSK, may be the case that these two signals could be confused each other ?