UAV

Artist impression. Courtesy of National Aerospace Laboratory

The roles of defense organizations are shifting rapidly. Today’s world is preoccupied with security (anti-terrorism and peace-keeping), rather than with traditional military threats. This has led to an increasing demand for multi-mode surveillance and reconnaissance missions employing UAVs to gather tactical and / or strategic intelligence data. This demand is even more encouraged by the increasing capability of SAR and other sensor systems, certainly when applied in a sensor fusion mode.

Specifically the SAR sensor has replaced the EO/IR sensors as the primary sensor as it offers many unique and valuable capabilities such a far range imaging, day-and-night / all-weather capability, Ground Moving Target Indication (GMTI), spotlight mapping, etc. The earlier limitations for full deployment of SAR systems on UAVs (limitations of on-board processing hardware and data acquisition capability) have been eliminated by the development of embedded processing systems. Processors become not only more powerful, they also become more agile, allowing reconfigurability “on-the-fly”.

These developments lead to definitions of true multi-mission SAR payloads where processing becomes more and more an integrated part of the sensor. In addition to collecting the raw SAR data, today’s multi-mission on-board processing systemsalso have the capability of generating a set of advanced intelligence products ranging from images (stripmap / spotlight) to tactical information (e.g. moving targets). The inherent processing capability of such a multi-mission UAV payload allows sensor fusion of the SAR sensor with EO/IR imaging and ELINT sensor systems..

EONIC uses COTS embedded digital processing technology for reconfigurable multi-mission SAR sensors. State-of-the-art FPGA technology already allowed us to integrate cost-effectively a small low-power multi-channel preprocessor with an advanced SAR sensor as part of the MiniSAR program for the Netherlands MOD, an ultra light-weight miniature SAR/MTI system.

The advanced architecture allows reduction of size, weight and power consumption while maintaining the mission objectives and the flexible multi-mission concept. The architectural concept is generic such that it can meet requirements for long endurance surveillance (which may last as long as 24hrs) or tactical mission, typically operated by and to support ground forces. Long endurance surveillance missions (strategic intelligence gathering with e.g. a MALE-UAV) typically require “on-the-fly” processor reconfiguration upon adaptation of the mission objectives and replanning / retasking of the sensor is required. Ground station operators may decide to switch to spotlight mode focusing on a specific object of interests observed in a stripmap image. In case of tactical missions, the sensor payload should be able to provide as much as possible dedicated tactical information from a predetermined and relative small area of interest. Such information may consist of a camera-like SAR image (i.e. generated in real-time and transmitted directly to the operational task forces) fused with EO/IR images, and including specific information generated by e.g. GMTI and Coherent Change Detection (CCD) processors.

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