High-frequency Direction Finding (electronics)

High-frequency Direction Finding (electronics)

High-frequency direction finding, usually known by its abbreviation HF/DF (nicknamed huff-duff) is the common name for a type of radio direction finding employed especially during the two World Wars.

The idea of using two or more radio receivers to find the bearings of a radio transmitter and with the use of simple triangulation find the approximate position of the transmitter had been known and used since the invention of wireless communication. The general principle is to rotate a directional aerial and note where the signal is strongest. With simple aerial design the signal will be strongest when pointing directly towards and directly away from the source, so two bearings from different positions are usually taken, and the intersection plotted. More modern aerials employ uni-directional techniques.

HF/DF was used by early aviators to obtain bearings of radio transmitters at airfields by rotatable aerials above the cockpit, and during World War I shore installations of all protagonists endeavoured to obtain information about ship movements in this way. The requirement both to tune a radio and rotate an aerial manually made this a cumbersome and slow business, and one which could be evaded if the radio transmission were short enough. Films depicting World War II spies transmitting covertly will sometimes show detection vans attached to patrols performing this activity.

Finding the location of radio and radar transmitters is one of the fundamental disciplines of Signal Intelligence SIGINT. In the World War II context, huff-duff applied to direction-finding of radio communications transmitters, typically operating at high frequency (HF). Modern direction finding of both communications and noncommunications signals covers a much wider range of frequencies.

Within communications intelligence (COMINT), direction finding is part of the armoury of the intelligence analyst. Sister disciplines within COMINT include cryptanalysis, the analysis of the content of encrypted messages, and traffic analysis, the analysis of the patterns of senders and addressees. While it was not a significant World War II tool, there are a variety of Measurement and Signal Intelligence (MASINT) techniques that extract information from unintentional signals from transmitters, such as the oscillator frequency of a superheterodyne radio receiver.