Trent's picture
Thu, 11/15/2007 - 17:16
Submitted by Trent

We just got in a very interesting recording from a friend of Metageek in Greece.

Here's what our customer had to say about it:

Capture with external directional 20dbi grid antenna.
Local AP at channel 5, some distant APs at channel 6 and channel 11.

Strong interference that makes the use of any AP impossible. (Client
with -55db signal cannot connect to local AP)

Unknown distance from the transmitting source.

Strange signals near channel 1,12 and between 6-9. When we point the
antenna to the opposite direction, values are lower (between
1.30min-2.00min in the capture file).

Continuous transmission 24 hours per day.

To see the recording, please download the following link.

2.4x Greek Mystery Device Recording

Thoughts anyone?

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The narrow-band signals at

brian's picture
Wed, 11/21/2007 - 10:59
brian

The narrow-band signals at 2414 and 2467 MHz are characteristic of an analog communication device.  I'm not sure about the 7.5 MHz wide signal in the center, though.  Some implementations of WiMAX use 7.5 MHz wide channels, but they are typically a more rectangular profile, and they don't operate in the ISM band.

Those look like video

Wed, 11/21/2007 - 13:36
phreon

Those look like video signals. I'm not sure about Greece, but in the US, some TV stations use 2.4 GHz systems as video uplinks (perfectly legal, as WIFI is not the primary user of the ISM band is defined by law). Grab some binoculars and see what is out in the distance on the same azimuth as those peak signals. Maybe they're radio towers or perhaps just neighbors with video surveillance systems.

This Waveform looks very

spiffyjumper's picture
Fri, 02/15/2008 - 18:06
spiffyjumper

This Waveform looks very much like Analog TV, except for the Frequency Span (more on that later)...but consider:

Normally, NTSC Commercial Analog TV would have a Vestigial Sideband AM Video component, with a companion FM Audio Component 4.75 MHz up from the Video. The Lower Sideband would be suppressed (hence Vestiigial). Amateur Televion does not require Vestigial Filtering, so they can modulate a full DSB signal, but most do not out of courtesy for other spectrum users--but I don't think it is amateur--more on that later.

However, given that this signal was intercepted in Greece, if we look at PAL-B/PAL-G/SECAM, we can "figure some stuff out".

PAL-B has a 7 MHz Channel Spaceing, with a Video Envelope that is 5 MHz wide, with an Audio Envelope at 5.5 MHz above the Video.

PAl-G looks like it is the same, except that the Channel Spacing is 8 MHz, apparently to accomodate Guard-Bands.
Anyway, in Greece, it appears that they use PAL-B on VHF, and PAL-G on UHF. (Some sources say that Greece is actually using SECAM, and I don't live there, so I don't know which they use, but the Channel Occupation and Evelopes will be nearly identical in appearence, so we can use PAL-G for our hypothesis).

Anyway, according to Channelyzer's Inspector function, the "Audio" is at ~2467.3 MHz, and if we ignore what should be filtered in the Vestigial Sideband, the "Video" is at ~2444.2 Mhz. Subtracting the two, we get ~23.1, which we devide by 4, and we get ~5.77MHz of bandwidth.

Furthermore, if we devide the "Video" of ~2444.2MHz by 4, we get ~611 MHz, and if we devide the "Audio" of ~2467.3 MHz by 4, we get ~616.8 MHz.

I don't currently have the channel allocation table for Commercial UHF Television in Greece, but when I find it, I will edit this.

So far, everything fits into the UHF PAL G Hypothesis.

So:
1) The Vestigial Filter has failed or does not exist;
2) the Frequency Span is about 4x what it should be, indicating that this may be a Fourth Harmonic of an Analog TV Signal (the 4th Harmonic would be 4x the actual frequency for each frequency in the span, therefor, the resulting wafeform would be four times as wide.

It sure *looks* like a broken Broadcast Transmission System to me.

Very interesting

Tue, 02/26/2008 - 11:27
baskin

Very interesting analysis.

To inform you in Greece we are using PAL-G and the frequency zone 468-860 MHz is for Commercial UHF Television (UHF channels 21-69).

I also have discovered that two local TV station (that may have faulty equipment) are broadcasting at 600 and 615MHz.

Do you have any thoughts about the similar to "Audio" signal near wifi channel 1?

Sorry for the late reply,

spiffyjumper's picture
Fri, 07/04/2008 - 13:17
spiffyjumper

Sorry for the late reply, Baskin, but I forgot all about this.
The extra Audio signal on Channel 1 is very likely from the same TV station.
When a TV station produces its Audio channel, there are two ways to do this:
1) The old fashioned way was for a seperate Visual Transmitter and a seperate Audio Transmitter, with the Visual signal modulated via Amplitude Modulation, with a Vestigial Sideband Filter to remove the Lower Sideband produced by AM. The Audio signal was a seperate Transmitter, modulated via Frequency Modulation (FM) up-band from the Visual Upper Sideband.
2) Many modern TV Transmission Systems use only one Transmitter, and the Audio signal is simply a sub-carrier. In this case, there will be a second Audio Signal subcarrier in the Lower Sideband. If the Vestigial Sideband Filter is working correctly, the second Audio signal would normally be suppressed. Since you can see the second Audio signal, the filter is either not present, or faulty.

Here is a fun thing to try:
If this interference is still present (if the TV station hasn't cleaned up their mess), try watching the TV station (on a regular TV receiver) and the Waveform on the Channelyzer, and you should see something fun.

With Television, since the signal is Amplitude Modulated, you can watch the waveform change with the picture content. For NTSC signals, the energy in the waveform will be come more dense (higher Amplitude) if the picture is dark, with a Black picture being the darkest (interestingly, TV stations can't use 100% Black in there Video feeds to the Transmitter, because 100% black is reserved for syncronization of the picture in the Vertical and Horizontal Blanking Intervals).

Perhaps you can observe and tell us if this is true for PAL G as well.

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