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Promoted by HENSOLDT
HENSOLDT, the leading German sensor solutions and the providers of the State of Art Air Defence and Weapon Locating Radar, COBRA, are now presenting its passive radar system called “TwInvis”.
TwInvis is a passive radar that adds a new dimension to the world of surveillance and situational awareness. It offers decisive operational advantages: it cannot be located due to the absence of any transmitted energy and it does not need any emissions from targets to locate them. TwInvis avoids adding to an already over-crowded electromagnetic spectrum and works
instead by using existing VHF and UHF transmissions from analogue and digital radio as well as television. This makes it perfect for: covert surveillance tasks, use in areas of electromagnetic congestion, gap filling, and where jamming is a concern.
Populated areas all over the world have sufficient transmitter-of-opportunity coverage for TwInvis to use. However, the system can also work in sparsely populated areas. This is achieved by the use of cooperative transmitters delivering either content like music or just white noise. Light, small and easy to deploy, TwInvis is equally home in urban areas or remote borders. Its economical price and maintenance and silent operation make it the right system to enable coverage in “white spots” and detection of targets formerly flying “under the radar”. It’s even considered to be accurate enough for application in the Air Traffic Control domain,
for its 3D real time and instant omnidirectional tracking, TwInvis uses state of the art processing and current high-end computing platforms. This allows the exploitation of more than 20 transmitters simultaneously. Deployable in a mobile, easily relocatable or as a fixed system, TwInvis also comes equipped with a mission planning tool to find the best sensor location and predict the scenario performance.
HENSOLDT’s TwInvis system excels with a very precise picture of the airspace covered, which is obtained by simultaneously analysing a large number of frequency bands. For example, up to 16 FM transmitters (analogue radio) plus 5 frequencies used by several DAB and DAB+ transmitters (digital radio) as well as DVB-T and DVB-T2 (digital, terrestrial television) can be simultaneously analysed for the first time. Furthermore, HENSOLDT’s new generation of software will provide unprecedented performance in terms of range and precision of detection.
In civil applications, passive radar systems make cost-effective air traffic control possible without any additional emissions and without using transmission frequencies, which are in short supply. In military applications, the system enables wide-area surveillance using networked receivers, while offering the advantage that passive radar systems cannot be located by the enemy and are very hard to jam. Moreover, no agreement is required with any other public authority, as there is no radiation, which allows the system to be quickly ready for deployment in new locations and to also be used in urban areas. This result in another advantage of the new technology: the system can be used in places where coverage was previously inadequate, in particular for example, in mountainous regions.
Passive radar is set to become a supplement to conventional active radar within the next few years. It offers a decisive operational advantage: it cannot be located and it cannot be jammed. The system uses VHF (very high frequency), digital radio and television frequencies as carrier waves rather than its own transmitter.
TwInvis has already shown what it can do in several demonstrations to military customers, air traffic control organisations and other interested parties. Two TwInvis demonstrators have already been delivered to potential customers in Europe.
About HENSOLDT
HENSOLDT is a pioneer of technology and innovation in the area of defence and security electronics. The company, headquartered in Taufkirchen near Munich, is a market leader in civilian and military sensor solutions, developing new products to counter a wide variety of threats based on disruptive concepts in such fields as big data, robotics and cyber security. With a workforce of some 4,300 employees, HENSOLDT generates revenues of more than 1 billion euros per year.
More info: HENSOLDT’s Australia office is located in Unit 4, 50 Collie St., Fyshwick ACT, Australia, 2609
