So, what is RANGER and what are the different components that it can offer to the market?
In short, in RANGER there are the first, the OTH radar, which is a High Frequency Surface Wave Radar (HFSWR) system that has the ability to detect targets at very large ranges, beyond the radar horizon. (See sub-chapter 3.2).
Secondly, there is the photonically enhanced PE-MIMO radar, i.e. an innovative radar that complements the OTH radar in detecting targets in close range over several kilometres with high resolution. (See sub-chapter 3.3).
Beyond the two radars, RANGER is much more.
The RANGER platform has its back-end and front-end, as well as the gateways. The Early Warning Engine is the back-end system of the RANGER platform that interfaces with the Uniform Communication Gateway, the Data Fusion module and Machine Learning module, as well as with the Common Information Sharing Environment (CISE) Gateway and the Advanced User Interface. The Early Warning Engine is responsible for early detection of events, data storage and provision of warnings and alerts. It is the core element which is closely interdependent with the Data Fusion and Machine Learning modules of the RANGER platform.
The Data Fusion module’s main role is to take all the available measurements at a particular time step (t), that could be detections from different sensors (radars, existing legacy systems5, and AIS6 data), and fuse them in order to obtain a set of tracks (routes), which are related to the existing targets in the current maritime scene. It performs data association, hybrid tracking and caching. The Machine Learning module will take input measurements from available sensors through the Data Fusion module, and employ machine learning methods to derive conclusions about the characteristics of the detected/tracked vessels and their behaviour. It performs clustering, classification and statistics analysis.
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