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Joint
STARS Data Link
 Cubic's
Surveillance and Control Data Link (SCDL) - considered the
best anti-jam data link in the world - is a key element of
the Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System (Joint STARS)
program.
A
cooperative U.S. Air Force and U.S. Army program, Joint STARS
is a sophisticated battle management system that allows air
and ground commanders to look behind enemy lines, obtain intelligence
and targeting data. The radar system can detect, classify
and track the movements of hostile - or potentially hostile
-- ground forces, including tracked and wheeled vehicles as
well as low-flying aircraft or ships at sea. )
The
Cubic SCDL provides a secure, all-weather link between Northrop
Grumman's E8C aircraft to multiple ground stations built by
Motorola. It consists of two major elements: Air
Data Terminals and Ground
Data Terminals. Among its features, the SCDL can relay
information from one ground station to another in the network,
and has multiple networks that operate simultaneously within
the same geographical area. (See Operational Concept
for additional information)
Starting
from a prototype in 1989, the link's performance and reliability
have been demonstrated through 58 failure-free missions during
Operation Desert Storm and more than 100 successful missions
in Bosnia.
Key features
of the SCDL include:
- High-speed
frequency hopping for maximum resistance to in-band interference
from any source
- Full
RF spectrum agility, enabling SCDL to operate in shared
spectral bands
- Encryption,
error correction and data redundancy to ensure that data
always get through
- Adaptive
data rates to 1.9 million bits/second
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