Objective

In today’s challenging security environment, Governments need to monitor conversations, fax and email messages and other data transmitted across satellite networks for national and international communications. Whilst most satellite communications are perfectly legitimate, the extensive geographical coverage provided by satellite communications networks means they are favoured by subversive groups in remote regions. Thus Satellite interception system is a basic requirement for countrywide intelligence collection operations.

The proposed Satellite Monitoring System will provide the intelligence agencies all Satellite transported information by all the countries coming in the same satellite spot beams.

System Introduction

Satellite Monitoring System is an Automated Satellite communication traffic reception, demodulation and decoding system. The Satellite Monitoring System is a powerful platform for Government and Intelligence Enterprises to monitor communication traffic in a total passive mode. The Satellite Interception System provides the Government and Law Enforcement agencies a highly sophisticated automated tool for conducting near real time analysis of Satellite Communication channels of interest.

Satellite Interception System provides its users with a fast Satellite data acquisition and Online Demodulation. The system has a Carrier Monitoring application integrated for finding new targets and achieving all necessary measurements. The system has been adapted in a manner to perform online DCME Analysis for current and new DCME systems being adapted by various subscribers globally.

Once the Satellite monitoring system is tuned to any of the satellite uplink and downlink frequency, all satellite information transported by these countries will be present for interception. The user can then based on his experience of using the carrier monitoring system, has to select the channel of the country of interest and tune the receiver to receive that channel of interest. The system will automatically demodulate the satellite signal and adapt the decompression scheme for extracting Voice/Fax and Data outputs for the intelligence operatives to view and act in accordance to the requirements.

System Capabilities

The system mainly consists of two components
    
     1) Carrier Monitoring System
     2) Content Monitoring System

Carrier Monitoring System:
The carrier monitoring system is responsible to finding new satellite targets and carrying out the required measurements.

Content Monitoring System:
The Content monitoring system is responsible of tuning the reception systems to the newly discovered target of carrier monitoring platform. This platform is also responsible of converting the C band reception into L-band via LAN and feed to the Demodulators for conversion of baseband into G.703 E1’s. On the basis of measurement and traffic parameters and evaluation, the compressed E1’s are routed to the DCME Analysis Workstations, which can take 2 E1’s and provide online analysis.

The Content monitoring system has been designed to take minimum of 60 traffic channels from 2 E1’s in case there is no DCME present. In case of DCME the Maximum Voice / Data 64Kbps channels can be 1200 (in case of DTX 600).

The Satellite Backend Processing system provides Logging of up to 32 E1’s in one chassis and provides online analysis of SS7 signalling and GSM based protocol for the purpose of decoding GSM Encoded voice and SMS traffic. The Satellite Backend Processing system provides on line IP and FAX decoding and reconstruction into Http, E-mail, Chat and Fax OCR image. Multiples systems can be stacked together to provide a larger networked storage and processing structure.

The Satellite Backend Processing system come along with a recording Interface and a Terra byte recording system for online storage of Intercepted communication on Cluster of RAID Drives for the purpose of secure archiving.

The whole network is connected using high speed Gigabit LAN connectivity on Ethernet, which is configured in a manner to control all the components of STR 3412. The system provides hierarchal control, as the task is divided into Test and Measurement, Acquisition, Monitoring and Post processing and Voice / Text Analysis

Upon successful decompression, the decompressed E1’s are fed into the Satellite Backend processing system. In case the E1’s are not compressed, then they are routed directly to the Satellite Backend processor.

The Monitoring and Post processing Platform provides total control of Satellite Back End Collection and Processing system. All the E1’s be it compressed or non – compressed are routed to this system for post processing of SS7 signals. The system is based on standard ETSI model, designed to work as a backend processor for satellite monitoring systems. The system is designed to accept standard SS7 signalling form satellite monitoring front-end systems like the open communication mode (non-compressed or compressed mode) where the signals are sent over satellite through DCME compression. The system is capable of Correlation of call content and signalling information, CDR production and archival in database, Filtering based on specific called and calling number, Search for live call trace of specific targets, Voice Recording and Playback.

The offered system currently handles only C band and 2 Input channels. In case the customer wishes, another band (Ku) can be added at extra cost. We would also like to mention that the system will only intercept, decode and decompress information and in no way will handle any decryption of any encrypted channel. In case an encryption channel is encountered, the system will provide the encrypted output. Creating an online/offline decryption facility will be a separate endeavour than the current proposal.

Achievements

•	The system will be capable of finding satellite communications taking place in the area of interest
•	The system will be capable of monitoring both uplink and downlink frequencies in C band. (optional Ku band can be added at extra cost)
•	The system will be able to monitor compressed or non-compressed E1 satellite trunks
•	System will be capable of interception Voice, Fax and IP Data communications taking place on these trunks.
•	The system will be able do record and replay intercepted Voice, Fax and IP data
•	The system will be capable of archiving all intercepted communications for a limited period of time.
•	The system will consist of workstations for the user to access the intercepted communications.

Optional Enhancements

•	Additional Ku band capacity.
•	Additional C and Ku band antenna.
•	Offline Analysis Capacity.
	Processing of all channels in real time is next to impossible until and unless we have similar number of workstations and manpower available. Hence optionally the system can be equipped with a variety of features for analysis, these include Text and Speech Analysis Functions based on strong Military grade algorithms to filter intercepts on the basis of Word and Topic Spotting, Language parameters and all other relevant statistical database like speaker and language/accent identification.

The system design is generic and it can be expanded to cater for multiple E1’s offering seamless future expansion if required