Security around the globe just got a boost with the release of a stationary, digital beamforming radar from Cassidian Sensors and Electronic Warfare of Unterschleissheim, Germany. The SPEXER 1000 brings military-class performance to security applications, allowing facilities to monitor a 120° field of view economically across a range as long as 17km (10.6 miles). The complete system is designed for easy installation and integration with command and control systems on stationary and mobile platforms monitoring land, sea, or air.
Terrorists and insurgents often focus on high-value domestic targets such as oil fields and power plants, making perimeter security a key concern. Visible and IR imaging systems can provide remote monitoring, but they're vulnerable to environmental effects like fog and duststorms and require design tradeoffs in areas such as field of view, depth of focus, and cost. The x-band SPEXER 1000 provides an alternative.
A stationary frequency-modulated continuous-wave radar, the SPEXER 1000 can monitor the zone of 120° with an update rate of 1.5s.
Photo courtesy of Cassidian
Like other non-optical radars, the SPEXER 1000 can only generate a limited set of results -- position and velocity -- but in some ways, therein lies its strength. Using the system, a guard at a refinery can easily assess a broad buffer zone at a glance, rather than having to constantly scan banks of screens to detect suspicious activity.
Conventional radar systems often rotate to cover 360°, but that's not always necessary in security applications. Often, perimeters can be secured by monitoring specific areas of vulnerability, which speeds up the process while reducing power demand and avoiding the acquisition and processing of unnecessary data. An airport system, for example, could ignore passenger entry points but would need to cover regions at the ends of runways or around the fuel depot.
The SPEXER 1000 consists of a stationary, frequency-modulated continuous wave (FMCW) radar featuring 30 receive channels, each with dedicated analog-to-digital conversion. The system, developed by Cassidian, leverages digital beamforming techniques to scan the field of view electronically, with each channel independently covering a range of ±50°. The design allows users to focus on areas of interest while speeding the update rate to 1.5s. Users can even set the system to cover only designated subsectors within the overall field of view, further reducing both scan time and energy consumption. The increased dwell time enhances dynamic range, allowing the unit to track targets moving at speeds as low as 0.7km/hr (0.5 mi/hr).
Detecting the velocity of objects involves nuances. A person has what we can think of as a group velocity -- the speed at which he or she is walking or running -- along with a set of local velocities, which represent the movement of arms and legs. Digital processing capabilities, combined with the dwell time, let the Cassidian radar correlate data with complex velocity signatures to differentiate a saboteur on foot from a truck. This not only permits rough object classification, but it can also reduce false positives such as signals generated by small animals.
The dynamic of the homeland security market is much like that of the broader mil/defense landscape. That is, technology in and of itself does not a market player make. OTOH, airport security and perimeter protection is actually a hotbed of innovation. I did a story early last year on a little-known effort by IBM, which I still find fascinating (the effort, not my story). Take a look at "IBM Patenting Airport Security Profiling Technology."
The detection system itself is of marginal benefit unless it is linked with an action element able to stop the incursion.
To prevent hostile incursions I would suggest a copy of our Navy "PHLANX" system, which provides an awsome level of protectionm against incoming "anything". Because most of the information is classified, there may not be much more information available than what I have already mentioned. However, the term awsome is certainly applicable.
It's not marketed at the home market but at the "homeland security" market -- high-value domestic targets like dams, airports, power plants, air traffic control centers, prisons, borders, etc. My term of choice would have been domestic, rather than homeland security, but some government person post-9/11 chose homeland security (which always sounds vaguely Nazi-esque to me), so we are stuck with it.
This is a very interesting product, but is it really for the "home" security market? I suppose one could argue that it would be useful for farms and ranches, but that's not really "home" security.
The average home does not typically have 17km to protect. So what is the short range?
As energy efficiency becomes more and more a concern for makers of electronics devices, researchers are coming up with new ways to harvest energy from sound vibration, footsteps, and even electromagnetic fields in the air.
The government wants to study your brain, and DARPA wants to use similar information to give robots true autonomy beyond any artificial intelligence developed to date. Sound like science fiction? It's not.
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A quick look into the merger of two powerhouse 3D printing OEMs and the new leader in rapid prototyping solutions, Stratasys. The industrial revolution is now led by 3D printing and engineers are given the opportunity to fully maximize their design capabilities, reduce their time-to-market and functionally test prototypes cheaper, faster and easier. Bruce Bradshaw, Director of Marketing in North America, will explore the large product offering and variety of materials that will help CAD designers articulate their product design with actual, physical prototypes. This broadcast will dive deep into technical information including application specific stories from real world customers and their experiences with 3D printing. 3D Printing is
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