Editing Automatic sounding

{{Unreferenced|date=December 2009}}

In [[telecommunications]], '''automatic sounding''' is the testing of selected channels for quality by providing a very brief identifying transmission that may be used by other stations to evaluate connectivity, and [[availability]], and to identify known working channels for immediate or later use for communications or calling. They are often used to maintain [[Telecommunication circuit|connectivity]] in digital communications [[Shortwave|high frequency radio]] networks.

Automatic soundings are primarily intended to increase the efficiency of the [[automatic link establishment]] (ALE) function, thereby increasing system [[throughput]]. 

In ALE, the sounding information consists of a heavily [[Forward Error Correction|error-corrected]] short message identifying the sender. Recipients decode it and use the [[bit error rate]] to calculate and store a (channel, node, quality) [[Row (database)|tuple]]. As ionospheric conditions and mobile-node locations change, these quality tuples will shift. The stored data can be used to maximize the chance that the best channel to link with a given partner will be chosen first.

==References==
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Automatic Sounding}}
[[Category:Communication circuits]]
[[Category:Radio frequency propagation fading]]