Development of an Experimental Prototype Multi-Modal Netted Sensor Fence for Homeland Defense and Border Integrity

Potential terrorists/adversaries can exploit a wide range of airborne threats against civilian and military targets. There is no effective, low-cost solution to robustly and reliably detect and identify small, low-flying airborne vehicles such as fixed-wing aircraft or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) that might be carrying out chemical, biological or nuclear attacks, or smuggling drugs or illegal immigrants across the border. This paper presents a low-cost and low-power methodology for performing key 24/7 sentry functions that can be used for the protection and the surveillance of critical infrastructure from airborne threats. The methodology is based on joint multi-sensor fusion technology. It consists of a forward-based fence comprised of a mixture of selected low cost, low power, netted sensors including a simple radar, acoustic microphone array and optical (infrared and visible) cameras to detect, track and discriminate potential airborne targets. An experimental prototype end-to-end proof of concept system with deploy able software, hardware and connectivity is built using COTS component. Multi-modal senor fusion algorithms employing Kalman filter for target tracking and acoustic and image recognition algorithm for target classification are implemented. Results from field tests reveal reasonable detection and discrimination among candidate aircraft.