Rohde & Schwarz announced the launch of the high performance R&S ADD557SR direction finding and monitoring antenna system. The system provides accurate direction finding capabilities across a wide bandwidth from 20 MHz to 6 GHz for both vertical and horizontal polarizations. It is ideal for R&S DDF550 wideband direction finders and R&S DDF5GTS high speed scanning direction finders. The new direction finding antenna system incorporates the latest technologies, making it a high-end, versatile device for stationary and mobile applications on land, at sea and even in the air.

This new antenna system is one of a kind and can do more than just direction finding. The R&S ADD557SR incorporates a separate antenna output that can be used independently of direction finding and in both polarizations over a wide frequency range. This helps focus on certain signals in the spectrum or suppress unwanted emissions.

In difficult environments with strong emitters, the new antenna system can be switched into passive mode in the V-/UHF range to avoid saturating the active antenna elements and enable direction finding, even in noisy situations. 

The R&S ADD557SR is super-resolution capable, the advanced direction finding technology can simultaneously determine the bearings of multiple emissions on the same frequency. It can detect signals in the spectrum that other emissions have concealed and spot signals undetectable to other direction finders. Super-resolution comes standard with the R&S DDF5GTS high speed scanning direction finder.

“Our new R&S ADD557SR multi-channel direction finding and monitoring antenna system has several unique selling propositions” said Frank Mayer, vice president Spectrum Monitoring, Rohde & Schwarz. “It increases the performance of entire monitoring stations.”