Signal Processing for a Southern Border Surveillance System

There is a vital need to secure the long southern border of the United States, much of its length passing through rural and desolate areas. This can be achieved using a fixed land-based sensor network to detect people and vehicles crossing the border. ISL and DMT have identified a system architecture which makes a southern border security system achievable at an affordable price. A surveillance system based on a ground-moving target indicator (GMTI) radar system designed to detect slow-moving, low radar cross section (RCS) targets and an electro-optical (EO)/infra-red (IR) camera can provide the coverage, update time, all weather performance, and cost effectiveness to make a border surveillance system practical. The key to making the surveillance system effective, and the focus of this effort, is to develop signal processing algorithms to achieve a high probability of detection on small, slow moving targets, such as walking people, in a high clutter environment while maintaining a very low false alarm rate. During Phase I, ISL and DMT will investigate an innovative approach to incorporate the knowledge of the surrounding terrain, wind-blown clutter, sensor fusion, and target tracking to achieve a high detection probability and minimize the false alarm rate.