VOXTEL, INC. — Department of Defense SBIR Phase I: A152-095

Description

Rotorcraft landing and takeoff is dangerous in environments where obstacles, particularly wires or power lines, exist, and pilot vision is degraded by obscurants such as dust, smoke, fog, rain and snow. This SBIR would focus on a radar solution to detecting wires and power cables when landing in a visually degraded environment. Existing data for wires and power lines with millimeter wave radars produce either curtains or periodic bright spots through the Bragg effect when used in traditional real beam imaging. However, if the sensor is capable of penetrating an obscurant and has an automated technique to recognize a power line or wire, the sensor can simply send data to an independent imager to nominally represent a wire without the need to image it. The development of a technique or algorithm to recognize wires at a variety of approach angles will improve the Army's capability of operation in degraded visual environments.