ARETE ASSOCIATES — Department of Commerce SBIR Phase II: 8.2.6

ARETE ASSOCIATES — SBIR Phase II award from Department of Commerce.

Amount
$399,964
Agency
Department of Commerce · National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
Program / Phase
SBIR · Phase II
Topic
8.2.6
Solicitation
NOAA-2018-2
NAICS
Place of performance
CA
Period
2019-06-27 → 2022-06-23

Description

The presence of fog reduces visibility, contributing to unsafe conditions for many maritime tasks. The current system uses active backscatter and has high power requirements, high maintenance and replacement costs. Areté Associates’ innovative FogViewer system comprises a passive multi-spectral, multi-polarization sensor suite that leverages available degrees of freedom to best characterize the fog. The envisioned FogViewer system will be innovative, better, easier, simpler, and less costly (initial and recurring) compared to current NOAA visibility sensors. Since fog varies due to different densities, absorption and scattering particles, the processing stream will utilize a combination temporal and spatial methods employed to best isolate the fog and report fog removed imagery. During Phase I a proof of concept system demonstrated the technical feasibility to measure visibility using passive sensors. Phase II will produce a low power, self-contained demonstration system to be evaluated under realistic maritime fog environments.