SRC to develop foliage-penetrating radar workstation to help find soldiers moving under cover of trees

SYRACUSE, N.Y., 19 Jan. 2011.Foliage-penetrating radar experts at SRC Inc. in Syracuse, N.Y., will develop a data-processing workstation to help pinpoint concentrations of foot soldiers moving in thick forests and other dense foliage under terms of a potential $11 million research contract from the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in Arlington, Va., company officials announced.The workstation to be developed for DARPA by SRC (formerly Syracuse Research Corp.) will process radar signals from a foliage-penetrating (FOPEN) radar mounted to manned and unmanned helicopters to filter out radar clutter like animals, wind-blown foliage, and moving water to estimate the position, size, and direction of travel of infantry concentrations moving under canopies of trees, bushes, and other foliage.SRC will use the company's Foliage Penetrating, Reconnaissance, Surveillance, Tracking and Engagement Radar (FORESTER) for the DARPA research project. FORESTER is an airborne radar system that penetrates through foliage to track people and vehicles on the ground. The DARPA program is called Foliage Penetration (FOPEN) Ground Moving Target Indicator (GMTI) Radar Exploitation and Planning (GXP) program.

Under the DARPA FOPEN GXP program, SRC will develop a set of tools to improve current FOPEN GMTI capabilities, and integrate and demonstrate these tools. This two year program has two phases of one year each. Phase one is worth $5 million, and was incrementally funded for more than $2.5 million until fiscal year 2011 funds are available later this year, company officials say.

In a separate contract, SRC won a $1.3 million pact with the U.S. Army Research, Development and Engineering Command Simulation and Training Technology Center in Orlando, Fla., for the FORESTER Signal Processing Enhancements program, which runs through fiscal year 2011. The funding for this effort stems from a fiscal year 2010 congressional earmark.

The DARPA FOPEN GXP project, meanwhile, seeks to develop a workstation integrated with tools to enhance foliage-penetrating radar data. DARPA wants to demonstrate the effectiveness of such a workstation with data from the SRC FORESTER system, which is mounted to a Boeing A-160 Hummingbird unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV).

SRC experts will develop workstation tools modules that discriminate between Doppler radar signatures, estimate the state and activities of detected infantry concentrations, plan where to place radar sensors, and determine radar modes for best results.

The SRC FORESTER radar has been demonstrated on a manned UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter, as well as on an A-160 Hummingbird unmanned helicopter. In 2009, DARPA experts tested the FORESTER on an A-160 to detect radar returns from moving humans and animals, ground vehicles, boats, and other clutter and false targets.

For more information contact SRC Inc. online at www.syrres.com, or DARPA online at www.darpa.mil.