A critical Siemens site now has stronger e-walls

CAMBRIDGE, UK: Siemens needed a field-proven electronic-scanning radar to monitor the perimeter of a strategic infrastructure site. It was important that the solution selected was maintenance free and offered 24-hour all-weather capability, very low false-alarm rates, the ability to detect vehicles and people including crawlers out to 7km, and cause minimal disruption to the site during installation.

Siemens selected the Blighter B400 series radars, which apparently combine patented solid-state Passive Electronic Scanning Array (PESA) technology with advanced Frequency Modulated Continuous Wave (FMCW) and Doppler processing, to deliver a robust persistent-surveillance capability.

Blighter Surveillance Systems has supplied a number of its Blighter B400 long-range ground surveillance radars to Siemens for installation at a national infrastructure site in Europe.

Milan Ceeh, head of Siemens' Fire Safety and Security business unit in the Czech Republic, said: "We opted for the technically superior Blighter radars after careful consideration, analysis and field trials. The Blighter radars met all our requirements. The long-range detection capability and wide elevation beam enabled the radars to be remotely mounted on existing infrastructure at the site thus avoiding the cost and disruption of digging up surfaces to lay cables."

The Blighter radars have now been installed at the location transmitting information (target latitude/longitude co-ordinates, range and bearing) over a TCP/IP network to a control room where they provide security staff with a map-based display of activity within the perimeter of the site.

"Already the radars are proving successful," added Milan Ceeh. "Within weeks of installation an intruder was detected by the radars, identified using the existing PTZ (pan, tilt, zoom) security cameras and apprehended by security staff after illegally crossing the perimeter."