REALM: Finding Hidden RF Threats

Radio frequency energy is all around us, moving invisibly through the environments where we live and work. Every secure facility exists within that broader RF environment: phones connect, radios transmit, Wi-Fi networks operate nearby, and Bluetooth devices come and go. The result is a spectrum crowded with legitimate activity, background noise, and signals that security teams have learned to expect. That creates an opportunity for something dangerous to hide inside it.

Expedition Technology built REALM to find it.

REALM is an RF anomaly detection and spectrum awareness capability designed to learn what normal looks like in a specific environment, then identify activity that does not fit.

Many conventional monitoring systems depend on knowing what they are trying to find. Wireless intrusion detection systems can identify known technologies such as Wi-Fi or Bluetooth by recognizing expected protocols. Traditional in-place monitoring systems often establish energy thresholds and alert when a signal crosses them.

A sophisticated transmitter may never cooperate with either assumption.

A signal can appear somewhere unexpected in the spectrum. It can operate inside existing RF clutter. It can behave differently from the protocols a security system was built to recognize. REALM uses a learned, data-driven approach to look for those changes in the environment itself.

That allows security teams to ask a more useful question: what is happening here that normally does not happen here?

In a secure facility, REALM detects unexpected RF activity where transmissions should be absent. During a temporary security operation, sensors can monitor an area for new activity during a specific period. At a fixed site, distributed sensors can continuously build awareness of the local RF environment and alert operators when something changes.

REALM also understands context over time. A transmission that routinely occurs every afternoon may be ordinary. The same activity appearing at 4 a.m. could deserve immediate attention. That pattern-of-life awareness helps distinguish environmental change from activity that merits investigation.

Then there is REALM Hindsight.

Sometimes the important question only becomes obvious after an event. Hindsight allows analysts to return to previously collected RF data, isolate a period of interest, and compare it against the surrounding baseline. Instead of manually searching massive collections of spectrum data, analysts can focus quickly on the signals that were unusual during the period that matters.

REALM can work with existing software-defined radio infrastructure or Expedition-recommended sensors, with configurations ranging from portable deployments to distributed fixed-site monitoring. Expedition's current public architecture also supports edge processing and centralized analysis.

Security teams cannot write a signature for a signal they have never encountered. REALM gives them another way to find it.

Investigate what others may miss. Learn more about REALM.