In Air Defense and Counter-UAS, having a well-protected airspace involves employing a combination of detection, identification, tracking, and interception capabilities to neutralize any potential threats to the airspace’s security and integrity. This includes real-time airspace coverage analysis by combining several live data sources.

As understanding airspace coverage can be very complex, visualizing the coverage of an airspace in an easy-to-understand way becomes crucial. Carmenta technology has a range of features designed to provide comprehensive visualization solutions tailored to this exact need.

Real-time Visibility Analysis

Carmenta’s Real-time line-of-sight analyses provide awareness of how much protection a sensor provides to your airspace. Quickly analyzing which effector is best suited for a target provides you with valuable time in a critical situation.

Line-of-sight Analysis

Real-time line-of-sight analysis, for both ground-based and airborne observers, provides operators with a clear understanding of sensor or effector coverage. By visualizing which parts of the surrounding terrain an observer can see, and taking sensor characteristics into account, the analysis can be performed in both 2D and 3D. This helps operators identify and analyze blind spots, and strategically position sensors for optimal coverage.

The green volume shows the coverage of the sensor in the city environment. (3D city model from IGI).

Target Line-of-sight Analysis

Carmenta offers real-time target line-of-sight calculations to establish direct visibility between observers and targets, taking terrain and potential obstructions into account. This makes it possible to track multiple targets, either manually or automatically, and determine the most appropriate sensor or effector to engage. Operators can choose the effector themselves or let the system automatically select the most suitable option.

Target line-of-sight. Each line is the direct line-of-sight from an observer to a target, in this case drones.

Visualizing Airspace Coverage in Real–time

To protect your airspace, it is vital to enable operators to easily understand and optimize sensor positioning and detection rates. Carmenta’s airspace coverage analysis is based on sensor position and characteristics, allowing operators to specify specific sensor setups and see the effect of these changes in real-time, helping them continuously optimize detection performance.

Airspace Coverage Analysis

• Visualize sensor coverage of the surrounding airspace.
• Visualize the rate of detection.
• Analyze blind spots and overlapping coverage.
• Configure strategic placements for sensors and effectors.

By moving the sensor, coverage of the surrounding airspace is updated in real-time. (3D city model from IGI).

• Visibility index: A visibility analysis shows the best observer positions for a target area. It gives the operator instant feedback on what the observer covers within a target area, and helps define the best locations to cover an area.
• Automated placement: Define criteria for optimal positions, such as accessibility, for automated placement of sensors.

The visibility index analysis shows the best observer positions for the target area (the red rectangle). Green marks a position with good coverage, red a position with poor coverage. Real-time line-of-sight analysis is shown in bright red within the red rectangle.

Make your visibility analyses more accurate by integrating custom propagation models such as:

• Radio coverage
• Radar coverage
• Ballistic trajectories
• Line-of-sight in degraded visibility conditions (such as forests)

Radio propagation as an example of a custom propagation implementation. Each colour reflects how strong the radio signal is at that location.

Combining Live Data Sources

By integrating and analyzing data from live sources, air defense and C-UAS operators can further enhance their understanding of the airspace in real-time, allowing them to make informed decisions and respond effectively to any emerging threats or incidents.

Projected Live Videostreams

• Overlay live videostreams from aircrafts, drones, or surveillances camera onto a 2D and 3D map in real time.
• Everything that happens in the video is immediately georeferenced, which significantly increases the usability of the video.
• Apply object detection algorithms to identify objects in videostreams and visualize them as static or moving objects on the map.

Drone video is projected onto the map, based on the camera properties. (Aerial photo from Bing Maps).

• Visualize raw radar video data in real-time.
• Multicolor radars are supported, which can be used to visualize weather radar information.
• Display recorded tracks of potential threats detected by radars.
• Handle millions of continuously moving objects.

Radar videos with radar plots on top.

 

• Display data as fully rendered map layers, or use the local weather information in your flight mission (for example in a performance calculation for an aircraft or drone).
• Visualize weather forecasts and live weather data.
• Support for widely used meteorological data formats such as GRIB (GRIdded Binary) and C-MAP.
• Fast calculation of ridges, valleys, and isolines
• Analysis of inaccessible slopes
• Close off or secure areas with dangerous or low-visibility weather, and re-route vehicles.

Example visualization of Grib weather information.