New generation of surveillance radars achieves new level of performance.
Article by Edward Lundquist
Terma’s SCANTER series of surveillance radar are in use around the world aboard naval and coast guard ships, providing air and coastal surveillance, as part of Vessel Traffic Services (VTS), surface movement radar (SMR) surveillance for airports.
The SCANTER 5000 series comprises a new generation of high performance radars designed for the challenging detection and tracking requirements of the professional surveillance community for applications such as VTS, coastal surveillance installations, and airport SMR.
“These applications demand consistent detection and tracking of targets ranging in size from extremely small to very large in high clutter environments and under a variety of conditions,” says Jim Moore, director of radar systems business development for Terma North America.
This new line of radars, built upon the legacy of the SCANTER 2001 line and utilizing the same high-performance antennas, turning units and clutter suppression, adds advanced technology such as solid state power amplifiers, multiple transmission frequencies, pulse-compression, coherent integration, and cutting edge signal processing.
“The SCANTER 2001 line has been in production since 2001 and is fielded in over 1200 locations worldwide,” says Moore. “That includes approximately 800 VTS and 300 Coastal Surveillance sites, and 110 airport SMR applications.”
According to Moore, the SCANTER 2001 is well established as part of the Coast Guard’s VTS program, which was formerly known as the Ports and Waterways Safety System (PAWWS). Terma radars support VTS in Puget Sound, the Southeast Texas Waterway, San Francisco, Houston/Galveston and the Southeast Texas Waterway, New Orleans, and New York, and other locations in the U.S. Terma systems are also integrated into Canadian VTS, such as the system in Puget Sound.
“The 5000 line builds on this foundation by replacing the magnetron based transmitter with novel low voltage, low temperature, solid-state transmitters,” says Moore. “This allows us to add coherent integration and Doppler processing to the repertoire of signal processing tools used within the signal processing chain.”
Terma makes complete systems, with the transceiver, antenna, processors and displays. But they also provide those components to be integrated into various systems. For example, the Canada’s VTS system in Puget Sound is provided by Signalis, but features Terma transceivers. Likewise, the maritime surveillance radar at Providenciales in the Turks and Caicos has Terma transceivers, an Easat antenna, Rutter Sigma 6 servers, Sea Track / Sea View software, a small target detection system and AIS transponders.
“We typically provide our radar sensors to customers as part of a larger system provided by a system integrator,” Moore says. “For this reason we have gone to great lengths to provide interfaces complying with published standards in a variety of formats, and we work with integrators to quickly resolve interface issues with their specific systems. Often the system integrator will supply their own radar tracking solution, but many times they look to us to provide it as part of the radar sensor. For these occasions we offer our new Embedded Tracker (ET2) unit as an option.”
The ET2 is aimed at detecting and tracking all kinds of targets on the sea surface, and can maintain up to 500 individual tracks on surface contacts at speeds up to 70 knots. Particular emphasis has been placed on the detection and tracking of small surface targets such as those used for illegal purposes. “We have focused on detecting and tracking surface targets in sea conditions with waves of 0.5 to 2 m height—sea states 2 to 5—which are the conditions when a lot of illegal traffic is observed. Small surface targets are characterized by possibly being non-metallic and of heights in the order of 0.5m to 1.5m. This means that the target will be hidden behind waves for a considerable part of the time, setting high requirements for the tracker.”
Moore says the SCANTER 5000 is available in two variants for coastal surveillance applications: the SC5102 50-watt unit; and the SC5202 200-watt unit. In addition, several antennas are available so that the system can be tailored to the end user requirements and budget. Terma will introduce two new solid-state radars next year, the Scanter 2100 and 2200. Both of these radars will have a limited feature set compared to the 5000 line but will still offer cutting edge performance. Moore says that “with these new models we now offer a full range of products to fit requirements across the complete spectrum of the professional safety and security market segment.
