The Broad Area Persistent Surveillance System, an advanced ISR application covering a wide area with imaging sensors is being developed by ITT for area surveillance and force protection applications. According to the manufacturer, the unmanned paraglider is providing an ideal platform for this application. The system collects individual, high resolution still images at a rate of two frames per second, creating a mosaic of 14 pictures depicting a ‘region’, defined by one 66 Megapixel image.
Enhanced with time stamps and location metadata the images are compressed ‘on the fly’ using multiple JPEG 2000 compression boards, where they are also merged into wide area ‘mosaic’ and are stored on board. Within seven seconds users can download an entire region from the airborne image server, using standard communication link. Users can pull whole regions directly from the airborne image server, with full resolution.
The airborne image server offers users the ability to view the scene in real-time, and also compare it to historical views of the targets, as well as the ability to conduct activity pattern and ‘forensic backtracking’ analysis (for example, tracking back a suicide bomber from the location where he exploded himself to the places and people he associated with prior to the attack). Replay, rewind and ‘fast forward’ can be processed on videos presented immediately after a video is taken, providing analysts valuable tools for situational awareness and investigation.
The platform uses scalable multi-camera arrays offering continuous coverage of large areas offering broad area situational awareness, forensic backtracking of specific events and ‘drill down’ into specific areas of interest.
