The chapter is about air surveillance system composed of several platforms equipped with primary and secondary radars. Currently, air situational awareness is obtained by data fusion of platform tracks exchanged via normalized Tactical Data Links. The performances of air surveillance can be significantly improved, taking into account the game changing due to telecommunication progress: High Data Rate network is now available on almost all the multiplatform systems, even those composed of mobile platforms as ships and aircrafts. Via HDR network, platforms can share plots (raw detections) of all their radars and a common improved air picture can be elaborated by plot data fusion on each platform. The first section presents the objectives of multiplatform air surveillance system in civil and military domains. The second section describes the theoretical multi radar performance gains under the hypothesis that the HDR network is perfect (no loss, no delay) and that the radar plots of all the platforms are exchanged. The third section describes the evolution of architectures for civil and military multiplatform systems over a 40 years period. For the upgraded multiplatform architecture, the fourth section presents its external interface and its main functions. The fifth section provides some examples of western multiplatform systems and gives some results of performance gains obtained by a multiplatform system in development. Finally, multiplatform systems' future challenges are discussed in the sixth section.

Chapter Contents:

• Abstract
• 13.1 Introduction
• 13.2 Role and objective
• 13.2.1 Civil domain
• 13.2.2 Military domain
• 13.3 Theoretical gains of multi-platform approach
• 13.3.1 Gains due to frequency and waveform diversity
• 13.3.2 Multi-radar improvements due to the diversity of viewpoints
• 13.4 Multi-platform architecture
• 13.4.1 Operational high data rate networks
• 13.4.2 Choices of data fusion
• 13.4.3 Evolution of multi-platform architectures
• 13.5 Description of the upgraded multi-platform architecture
• 13.6 Examples of western multi-platform systems
• 13.6.1 Preliminary study for French Navy
• 13.7 Next challenges
• Acronyms
• References

Inspec keywords: sensor fusion; radar tracking; military radar; search radar; military communication

Other keywords: high data rate network; civil multiplatform system; data fusion; HDR network; secondary radar multiplatform system; military multiplatform system; ship; primary radar multiplatform system; multiplatform air surveillance system; western multiplatform system; air situational awareness; aircraft; mobile platform; normalized tactical data link; telecommunication progress

Subjects: Radar equipment, systems and applications; Military communications; Radar and radiowave systems (military and defence)