ACOUSTIC SURVEILLANCE & MONITORING SYSTEMS

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1 ACOUSTIC SURVEILLANCE & MONITORING SYSTEMS

2 ACOUSTIC TECHNOLOGY FOR IMPROVED SURVEILLANCE CAPABILITIES Surveillance capabilities are currently supported by diverse sensor technologies to a variable degree. Systems for short/ medium range area surveillance include electro-optical (EO) sensors, infrared (IR) and magnetic sensors, and eventually radars. However, their performance is largely dependent on the observed environment, which concurs in determining the effectiveness of the sensing domain. The urban environment complexity is dramatically increased by the presence of neutrals (e.g., crowd), the multipath effects, the obstacles (e.g., buildings, trees), dense fog and light smoke-screens, which are well known degrading factors for seismic, radar and electro-optical sensing technologies. To answer such problems, we developed the Acoustic Urban Threat Detector for Improved Surveillance Capabilities (AUDIS) system. It is based on acoustic technology for enhanced early warning and classification capabilities, including non-line of sight operation, to support military operations. Specifically, by using passive acoustic sensors, it aims to provide a remote, robust and accurate system for detecting, locating, and classifying a wide range of ground targets in real-time. Acoustic sensors outperform EO/IR devices, which suffer from low-coverage areas and poor visibility. Also, passive acoustic technology does not share the bistatic geometry constraints of passive coherent radars. Advantages of acoustic-based sensing systems include, among others: They are low-cost, passive, low-power, non line-of sight, 360 degrees field-of-view, and wide area coverage; They provide the ability to detect-classify-localize-track a variety of transient events (e.g., mortar, snipers and explosions), continuous sources (e.g., tanks, trucks, helicopters) and personnel; They can complement other sensor modalities via cueing and fusion. Acoustic-based systems are also common solutions for air surveillance, due to their passive nature. In such a frame we developed the GUARDIAN acoustic system as support for airplane traffic control in aerodrome zone. In both projects, D Appolonia has been involved in activities related to design, assembling, integration and testing of the acoustic prototype for experimentation activities performed both in military facilities and at Rome airport site. Moreover D Appolonia has been deeply involved in finalizing and tuning the Real-Time Data Processor version for the final prototype including Classifier and Exploitation module for the final demonstrations and has supported the data elaboration activity related to the above mentioned tests. As project coordinator of both projects, D Appolonia foresaw the maintenance of project plan and schedule, including the fulfilment of milestones and the production of internal results and deliverables. Another role concerned the organization and the coordination of Internal Consortium and Project Review Meetings.

3 AUDIS - ACOUSTIC URBAN THREAT DETECTOR FOR IMPROVED SURVEILLANCE CAPABILITIES The AUDIS Project is funded by the European Defence Agency in the Defence R&T Joint Investment Programme on Force Protection (A-0120-RT-GC) under the Call Data Analysis, including Data Fusion from various Sources (A-0444-RT-GC). The EDA Programme intends to further develop the existing technological capabilities (focus on Novel Sensors ) in support to military actions and peacekeeping operations in urban areas. Military operations in urban environment are deeply changing the requirements posed on sensing technologies. The final goal is threat mapping within the mission area. This is intended for supporting a number of operations, such as (i) patrolling and inspection, (ii) secured areas monitoring and (iii) intervention planning for relief. These missions face offences and attacks that are intrinsically irregular, asymmetric and heterogeneous. Moreover, urban threats as ground vehicles and groups of persons, offer high complexity in detection and characterization carrying or perpetrating the offence. The features of the menaces to cope with vary from case to case, drawing the nominal scenario in which opponents act. AUDIS aims at designing and developing a novel cognitive sensor that offers flexibility and adaptivity to the encountered scenario while ensuring a neat capability improvement in recognition and characterization of such ground threats. AUDIS is conceived to increase the nowadays available capabilities in threat detection, discrimination, classification, recognition and identification in support to urban situational awareness. To achieve this goal, the novelty resides in the sensor concept itself and the foreseen logical architecture. The AUDIS sensor is a multi modal, in air passive acoustic device working in arrayed/sparse configuration. It offers the high number of degrees of freedom that is neces-sary for (i) optimal disturbance rejection (e.g. reverberation in urban environment), (ii) detection of potential threats, (iii) tracking of threats represented by ground vehicles and hostile crowds or human beings ( non-transient targets, NTTs), (iv) threat classification and friend-foe-neutral elements identification, and (v) threat behaviour analysis and risk evaluation.audis overcomes state-of-the-art acoustic sensors by introducing significant innovation and novelty in four crucial aspects: Sensor design; Sensor control and management; Acoustic data processing; Acoustic data exploitation.these represent the four R&T development paths in AUDIS. The AUDIS Consortium is led by D Appolonia S.p.A., and composed by University of Pannonia (Hungary), Computer Technology Institute (Greece), ITTI Sp. z.o.o. (Poland) and TNO Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research (Netherlands).

4 GUARDIAN - AN IN - AIR PASSIVE ACOUSTIC SURVEILLANCE SYSTEM FOR AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL The GUARDIAN Project is funded by MIUR with the aim of developing a novel acoustic system for the improvement of cooperative management of ATZ (Aerodrome Traffic Zone) air traffic control. ATZ is the air space of defined dimensions interested by taking off and landing of aircrafts. The air traffic control inside ATZ (Aerodrome Traffic Zone) is a key activity for airport management services to meet increased security and a low environmental impact on air transport systems. In recent years an increasing demand has interested airports and the related air traffic management authorities. The risk of collision between taking off and landing aircrafts and between aircraft and ground vehicles due to increased air traffic are issues that have highlighted the need to improve airborne surveillance systems by means of real time aircraft identification and tracking procedures in aerodrome zone. State-of-the-art ATM (Air Traffic Management) systems for aerodrome surveillance include especially radar technology. On the other hand, there is currently a significant increase of interest in the international scientific community, in the definition of alternative acoustic systems for locating, tracking and identification of moving acoustic sources with particular attention to aspects of intruder aircrafts and for monitoring the movement of ground forces. This interest stems primarily from the fact that unlike radar detection, acoustic detection can be performed with totally passive sensors only by listening to the noise of the target. This represent an obvious advantage from the environmental point of view (no emissions of any kind), safety (no possibility of locating the sensor in the absence of emission, inability to drastically reduce the noise of the target), and costs (reduced energy consumption due to lack of transmission power, lack of critical components working at microwave, etc.).for all the mentioned reasons the GUARDIAN system aims to support the airplane traffic control in aerodrome zone by means of a passive and low cost technology based on two acoustic arrays. The proposed novel cognitive sensor offers flexibility and adaptivity to the airport scenario while ensuring a neat capability improvement in aircraft and ground vehicles detection, location and tracking. The GUARDIAN sensor is a multimodal, in-air passive acoustic device working in arrayed/sparse configuration by means of an innovative ensemble of digital processing stages. This system allows the detection and tracking of in flight aircraft and in take-off or landing by means of a passive detection and spectral analysis of airplane acoustic emission. The system prototype consists of two planar acoustic sensors, one rotating (Master) and one fix antenna (Slave), based on a passive phased array of randomly distributed microphones and a command & control unit to allow the user to manage and visualize tracking data. The GUARDIAN Consortium is led by D Appolonia S.p.A. and composed by University of Rome La Sapienza (Italy), CIRA (Italian Aerospace Research Centre), AdR (Airport of Rome).

5 D APPOLONIA S.p.A. Via San Nazaro, GENOVA - Italy Tel Fax dappolonia@dappolonia.it