The 3rd Generation Goodrich DB-110 system provides users with a three (3) field-of-view high performance Airborne
Reconnaissance capability that incorporates a dual-band day and nighttime imaging sensor, a real time recording and a
real time data transmission capability to support long range, medium range, and short range standoff and over-flight
mission scenarios, all within a single pod. Goodrich developed their 3rd Generation Airborne Reconnaissance Pod for
operation on a range of aircraft types including F-16, F-15, F-18, Euro-fighter and older aircraft such as the F-4, F-111,
Mirage and Tornado. This system upgrades the existing, operationally proven, 2nd generation DB-110 design with
enhancements in sensor resolution, flight envelope and other performance improvements. Goodrich recently flight tested
their 3rd Generation Reconnaissance System on a Block 52 F-16 aircraft with first flight success and excellent results.
This paper presents key highlights of the system and presents imaging results from flight test.
Goodrich's DB-110 Reconnaissance Airborne Pod for TORnado (RAPTOR) and Data Link Ground Station (DLGS) have been used operationally for several years by the Royal Air Force (RAF). A variant of the RAPTOR DB-110 Sensor System is currently being used by the Japan Maritime Self Defense Force (JMSDF). Recently, the DB-110 system was flown on the Predator B Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), demonstrating the DB-110 system's utility on unmanned reconnaissance aircraft. The DB-110 is a dual-band EO and IR imaging capability for long, medium, and short standoff ranges, including oblique and over-flight imaging, in a single sensor package. The DB-110 system has also proven performance for real-time high bandwidth data link imagery transmission. Goodrich has leveraged this operational experience in building a 3rd Generation DB-110 system including new Reconnaissance Airborne Pod and Ground System, to be first used by the Polish Air Force. This 3rd Generation system maintains all the capability of the current 2nd Generation DB-110 system and adds several new features. The 3rd Generation system upgrades include an increase in resolution via new focal planes, addition of a third ("super-wide") field of view, and new avionics. This paper summarizes the Goodrich DB-110 3rd Generation System in terms of its basic design and capabilities. Recent demonstration of the DB-110 on the Predator B UAV is overviewed including sample imagery.
The Goodrich DB-110 system is discussed in terms of its basic design and concept. An operational platform utilizing the DB-110 system known as the Reconnaissance Airborne Pod for the TORnado (RAPTOR) aircraft is overviewed describing the complete automatic turnkey operation of the system. Dual-band imagery from RAPTOR displays DB-110's imaging capability for long, medium, and short standoff range as well as over-flight mission performance. Additionally, enhancing the resolution and other multi-spectral and Hyper-spectral formats of the DB-110 system are introduced as evidence of future products based on the present DB-110 system.
Atmospheric scattering of ultraviolet light is examined as a mechanism for short-range, non-line-of-sight (NLOS) communication between nodes in energy-constrained distributed sensor networks. The physics of scattering is discussed and modeled, and progress in the development of solid state sources and detectors is briefly summarized. The performance of a representative NLOS UV communication system is analyzed by means of a simulation model and compared to conventional RF systems in terms of covertness and transceiver power. A test bed for evaluating NLOS UV communication hardware and modulation schemes is described.
Hyperspectral imaging has emerged as a useful technology for target recognition and anomaly detection.
However, passive hyperspectral sensors in the VNIR/SWIR are limited to daytime and fair weather operations.
Furthermore, for applications such as material identification, the need for reflectance spectra requires either inscene calibration panels or detailed atmospheric information. Active hyperspectral sensing has the potential to
increase the utility of hyperspectral imaging by enabling nighttime operation and non-cooperative conversion to reflectance. At MIT Lincoln Laboratory we have developed an active hyperspectral sensor system to investigate
combining active illumination with hyperspectral imaging. Our primary illumination source is a novel broadband ‘white light’ laser, developed at MIT Lincoln Laboratory. Initial phenomenology measurements have revealed an
additional benefit of active illumination - enhanced scene contrast due to shadow reduction. We have demonstrated two orders of magnitude decrease in false alarm rates with active illumination versus passive.
Hyperspectral imagers have the unique capability of doing both material identification and anomaly detection. However, hyperspectral imagers with hundreds of co-registered contiguous bands are difficult to field particularly if real-time processing is required. With judicious choice of bands, the anomaly detection performance of a multispectral sensor can rival that of hyperspectral sensors. In order to achieve this performance, the choice of multispectral bands relies on the presence of exploitable target or background spectral features. The universality of these features will determine the overall utility of a multispectral system. We have discovered that water vapor features in the SWIR (Short Wave InfraRed) can be used to distinguish manmade objects from natural backgrounds. As an example, we will show that two broad bands chosen to exploit these features make most manmade objects detectable in the presence of natural clutter with few false alarms.
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