Tuesday, September 30, 2014

Advanced radar to detect small boats – New Technology


     RIB boats are difficult to detect on radar. Modern Dopperradar a better position to see the boats than other radar techniques. Then small rubber boat at the Estonia wreck site discovered. Photo: Dorset Media Service / Alamy, TT
     

Finnish radar may have difficulty detecting small rubber boat at the Estonia wreck site. But the technology to be able to do it is on the way.

According to the author Anders Jallai before it dives the wreck of the Estonia in the Baltic Sea, despite the rules on gravfrid.

In order to ensure that no violations made by Estonia uses Finnish coast guard monitoring via radar . The nearest radar station located in Finnish Utö, 4, 5 mil from the wreck site.

Jallai and diving experts, however, argue that sport divers using less inflatables and RIB, which is hard on the radar, may escape detection.

In order not to be seen on radar, they can put out buoys on the surface above the wreck, divers unload, and quickly disappear from the protected sea area – to later come back and retrieve them.

Sami Järvenpää manage Åbodistriktet in Finland Coast suggest that the technique is very unlikely:

– At least no one would wise diver doing so, my of nowhere, without a support vessel, and with a diving depth of 70-80 meters.

Asked if the coast guard facilities to detect RIB answers Järvenpää that he does not want to reveal anything about the country’s radar capability.

– Our radarstationers capacity is sensitive information, he says.

According to sources within the Swedish Coast Guard, it is a matter of weather. In clear and fine weather without wind radar stations can detect RIB – but not at the rough seas and rain. This clears the small rubber vessels radar reflective surface in the radar reflections from the waves, known as graffiti.

However, better surveillance technology is heading, according to Staffan Gadd and sensor researchers at FOI, Swedish Defence Research Agency, Linköping.

– With the help of more advanced radar technology would be able to take care of and find these little boats with low signatures, he said.

There is also difficult. The reflecting surface of a RIB is approximately one square meter, it is as small as a man’s, according to Gadd.

In order to distinguish small boats from the radar screen as the waves gives, the researchers are working with the Doppler technique, which measures the speed of the radar reflectors.

– It is only with very modern Doppler radar that can measure very small differences in speed, as it is possible, he says.

Both in South Africa and the United States, research is in the art. The authorities want to be notably improved opportunities for search and rescue and additionally quickly detect ships with refugees and small boats that pirates typically use.

From radar stations on land, it is still difficult to look out over sea areas far away. Attempts are now being made, particularly in a military context, to equip unmanned plane, with the technology. They can either fly reconnaissance or hang over and monitor marine areas.

Radar Station Finnish island is a the closest Estonia:

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