Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - ALFA (Advanced Low Flying Aircrafts Detection and Tracking)

Teaser

ALFA provides a solution for the detection of small aircraft that are used to smuggle drugs from morocco to Spain and Portugal. The system will assist the policemen to hunt down and arrest the smugglers.Protecting European borders against drug trafficking is vitally important...

Summary

ALFA provides a solution for the detection of small aircraft that are used to smuggle drugs from morocco to Spain and Portugal. The system will assist the policemen to hunt down and arrest the smugglers.

Protecting European borders against drug trafficking is vitally important. More and more, small aircraft are used that can cross the sea border (almost) undetected due to their small size and low flight altitude. A hot-spot in this respect is the Strait of Gibraltar where many cases of airborne drugs smuggling are reported. Drones are already widespread used at the US-Mexican border. It is just a matter of time until drones are used in Europe too. Drones also can be launched from vessels close to the coast.

Efficient pursuit of drug trafficking requires timely warning and knowledge of the intended landing site or dropping zone. This will allow law enforcement entities to intercept the drugs and smugglers on the ground, as well as the pilot in case of landing.

Timely warning cannot always be obtained from existing coastal surveillance systems. Aircraft are small and often low-flying, which makes them hardly visible. Trafficking aircraft typically fly at very low altitudes to avoid showing up on radar during night-time hours or at dawn. Existing radar systems are mainly designed for surface surveillance, in other words for detecting and tracking vessels of all kinds. A system is needed that can add the capability to detect small low flying aircraft and drones. To be able to hunt down and arrest smugglers on the ground, a prediction of the landing or dropping zone is needed.

The ALFA project is developing a system that can cope with the above mentioned situation. The ALFA system consists of radars, cameras and other sensors that are specifically designed to detect small aircraft and drones. Moreover, the system can reveal much information about the craft, like for example the rotational speed of the engine and, for a drone, the number of rotors. This all helps the identification of the drone or aircraft.
The following ground breaking objectives are paramount for ALFA:
• New radar technologies.
Radar is the basis for the system. Existing radar is optimized for the specific task of detecting the Low Slow and Small (LSS) targets in a maritime border environment. An essential part is adding new technologies like micro-Doppler for detecting and classifying LSS targets and making the solution future-proof.
• Advanced processing technologies.
ALFA’s extensive data fusion and information analysis (including behavioral analysis) is new in its ability to predict landing sites and dropping zones. Moreover it allows the overall objective to be met, which is not possible for a single sensor solution.
• Future sensor technologies
ALFA’s additional RF sensor solutions (which are passive radar and RF radio-localization system) are for the first time used for maritime border surveillance for larger distances. They will also add to the capability for future evolution of the ALFA system.
• Advanced architectural design
A new open architecture will be developed that allows any number of relevant heterogeneous sensors to be connected. This makes the ALFA a scalable and flexible system, thereby enabling implementation of future developments.

Work performed

The work performed in the considered period:
• An extensive study has been performed to the type of aircraft that could fulfil the smugglers needs. The inventory encompasses relevant fixed wing, helicopter and UAVs.
• Visits have been made to GC and GNR to obtain a good view on the operational aspects of the combatting of drug trafficking. Their requirements with respect to detection of drug trafficking have been discussed.
• The architecture design has been detailed, including sensors and processing, information flow and data model, and provisions for connection with other systems (SIVE, SIVICC)
• Radar technology has been developed that enable radar to detect small aircraft in a sea clutter environment. The development of specific microDoppler technology for ALFA allows for the extraction of various attributes of the drone or aircraft.
• Software is being developed for data fusion, detection, classification, tracking, feature extraction, behavioural analysis, threat analysis and landing site prediction.
• Tests have already been performed with the SQUIRE radar and the passive RF system.
• First steps have been made in the preparation of the final demonstration.

Final results

Progress beyond state-of-the-art and expected results: ALFA will take detection and tracking of low flying, small and/or slow aircraft to a new level. Sensor performance, fusion and processing will be brought to a level that enables superb detection and tracking of targets while providing a good prediction of the most probable landing sites. ALFA will combine four essential steps to resolve this:
• Apply highly innovative fusion techniques, to achieve detection and tracking performance that is unachievable for single sensors. It will enable very low false alarm rates, being essential for the system to be of real use to the end-user.
• Apply highly innovative classification techniques, essential to separate targets from all clutter which will also be detected when severely lowering detection thresholds in order to detect also smaller and slower targets. These techniques are not in use with current operational systems, but within the consortium, partners have been conducting basic research on these techniques and are ready to make the next step for fielding these techniques.
• Apply highly sensitive sensors capable to detect also the smaller and slower air targets. We aim at augmentation of radar by adding new technologies like micro-Doppler (aiming at high TRL) as well as on more exotic sensor solutions (ensuring future evolution).
• Inclusion of any available information source. The concepts of open architecture and common data model are known but not exploited yet to the level needed in ALFA, with respect to data rate, heterogeneous data types and application.

Impacts:
• ALFA will contribute to development and enhancement of the existing EU surveillance system EUROSUR and prevent cross border crimes:
• ALFA detection capability of UAV will be adaptable in other scenarios, not only in the border surveillance (e.g. protection of sensitive infrastructure) and to detect several small targets (e.g. birds), allowing the use of this technology in several other purposes (e.g. monitoring of birds seasonal migration)
• ALFA will improve the situational awareness thanks to a continuous detection of targets currently undetectable by many of existing surveillance systems
• ALFA will improve the reaction capability and decision making thanks to the early menace detection, to the potential landing sites identification and to the use of tools that are easily deployable and able to increase the surveillance capabilities
• ALFA will have positive impacts on user operational procedures and will help in cost reduction, automating surveillance tasks, currently done by using specific resources (helicopters, land patrol and people), that could be employed in other services

Website & more info

More info: https://alfa-h2020.eu/.