Digital Global Systems adds remote-access capability to solution

Maryland-based startup Digital Global Systems (DGS) has enhanced its SigBase 1000 solution for identifying and tracking interference sources by making modifications that allow the package to be left at a site while letting the network operator access the information in real time via an Internet connection, according to an official with the company.

With the DGS SigBase 1000, network operators not only monitors activity at a geographic location within a spectrum range—common functionality for a spectrum analyzer—but it automatically cross references interfering signals with an FCC database to identify the source of interference, according to Jeremy Levin, senior vice president of DGS. Although the original SigBase 1000 was simple to use, it required a person to stay with it during the monitoring activity—a reality that a major wireless carrier noted as a limiting factor, he said.

“We learned that market really wasn’t that interested in having a big box that they were going to have to cart around,” Levin said during an interview with IWCE’s Urgent Communications. “What ended up happening was that [the carrier] helped us understand what their need was. They said, ‘If we could put this thing on site and could close it—having the antennas on the outside—and we could actually send the information back to a remote location, that would be a good thing for us.’

“We found that our bread is really going to be buttered as an automated device.”

With this input, DGS revamped the SigBase 1000 to include outside antennas, locks on the Pelican case to ensure security, and software that lets the data be accessed remotely, so a person does not have to stay with the unit throughout the monitoring cycle, Levin said.

“We have a remote desktop application, where you can be anywhere in the world—as long as you have an Internet connection—and access the device,” Levin said. “What you can do is you can drop this thing off, put locks on it, secure it in a DAS room or wherever you want to put it—it’s not meant for the outside yet, because we’re developing something else for that; this would be for an indoor area. You can put it down, leave it, talk to it from a remote site and access it as if you were there and really never have to go back, if you didn’t want to.”