Blighter™ E-Scan Radar
Blighter™ is Plextek's family of security products consisting
of radar and asset tracking solutions. The Blighter range of radars
comprises low cost, electronically scanned, portable FMCW radar systems
for the remote detection of moving targets. The Blighter Asset Management
system is a complementary low cost GPS Asset Tracking solution that
allows people, vehicles and other assets to be tracked over a 10km radius
using Plextek's unique UNB telemetry technology. Plextek are also able
to provide custom design solutions for specialist security and communication
applications.
Blighter radars are completely self-contained units, with
no movingparts, and are small and light enough to be man-portable. They
are ideally suited to ground-based area and border security applications
and for use as an airside safety technology. The absence of moving parts
allows covert installation on buildings, vehicles or a tripod. The Blighter
radar is designed for integration into large networks of sensors, including
other Blighter radars, thermal imagers, day/night cameras and other
remote sensors. This results in a versatile system that is well suited
to a wide range of applications such as:
- Homeland security
- Airside safety
- Airport and secure-area protection
- Asset protection
- Border surveillance
- Perimeter monitoring
- Personnel protection
- Pipeline and utility services protection
- Auto-detection for existing security camera systems
The Blighter radar is an FMCW Doppler radar, capable of detecting slowly
walking people or fast vehicles over an instrumented range of 20 metres
up to 8 or 16km. The radar operates by filtering out the static objects
such as trees and buildings, which it displays as a Clutter Map that
may be used for site planning. The moving objects are clearly displayed
over a background image, such as a map, and the user is then able to
interrogate the target plot to view additional target information including
target location, size and radial velocity. Having selected a specific
target, the user is then able to electronically stare the radar beam
at the target and listen to the Doppler Signature of the target. This
provides a very simple yet efficient means of identifying the target
type e.g. person, vehicle or wild animal. Information from the radar
can also be sent to remote PC applications for those users requiring
Target Tracking and Automatic Target Classification.
Low power technology is used throughout the radar design allowing the
radar to be powered from a small lightweight battery pack. To reduce
power consumption still further, the radar can be configured to skip
unwanted sectors or sleep between scans. For operation in remote areas,
Blighter can be powered by a solar cell and battery combination.
The Blighter radar is fitted with numerous interfaces. Wired Ethernet
and 802.11 Wifi connections provide networked communications for fixed
or portable applications. The radar data can be viewed remotely on Plextek's
Blighter View application software or it can be integrated into 3rd
party applications including GIS mapping display systems. GPS receivers
and a Digital Compass built into the radar allow the radar and its targets
to be accurately located for direct placement on maps.
The Blighter radars have enabled radar technology to become a cost-effective
sensor within surveillance systems for the first time.
More information on Blighter radars can be found here:
