PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

Mobile radio passive radar makes harbors safer

Mobile radio passive radar makes harbors safer
2014-12-15
(Press-News.org) Airports are now subject to careful security surveillance, but many coastal towns and ports are not; they often lack radar installations to keep track of small boats, meaning terrorists could easily use speedboats to approach the coastline and bring explosives on land. Now, researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Communication, Information Processing and Ergonomics FKIE in Bonn developed a passive surveillance system for littoral regions based on mobile radio illumination called Passive Coherent Location (PCL). It passively employs the continuous radio signals emitted by cell towers to detect suspicious boats, including those speedboats favored by pirates for approaching cargo ships. The fusion with electro-optical or infrared systems allows the classification of the different targets.

This new method works in much the same way as radar systems, which send electromagnetic signals toward an object and then collect the echo they return. Similarly, the PCL system detects boats based on reflected electromagnetic radiation from mobile networks. But it's much more difficult to evaluate radio signals than radar. A radar antenna transmits its own well-defined signals into a limited area. Echoes can be easily interpreted. The new sensor makes use of mobile network radio signals coming from different directions and from different cell towers. It receives a chaotic echo mix from which objects have to be carefully extracted. "One challenge is that our sensor system tends to pick up the strong signals from the cell towers themselves," says Reda Zemmari, project manager at the FKIE "The signal echoes reflected off the boats on the water are considerably weaker." Versatile, mobile system

As a result, the researchers had to develop algorithms to compensate for this shortcoming. Now the software can suppress the strong radio signals coming directly from the cell towers. "It's handy that different cell towers use different frequencies," Zemmari continues, "because this allows the software to better differentiate between the various signals and echoes. What's more, the system can detect boats that are in motion based on their movement that causes a frequency shift. "Our system continuously checks whether it is correctly assigning signals and correctly interpreting the object's movements," says Zemmari. During tests off Eckernförde and Fehmarn, the researchers have already successfully tracked speedboats just a few meters in length from four kilometers away. "Our system can be transported on a small trailer, which means it can be deployed anywhere," says Zemmari - provided there is sufficient mobile network coverage. The research scientist emphasizes that the PCL system doesn't in any way read users' mobile data. "All we use is the transmitter's operating signal, which does not carry customers' data packets."

Preventing acts of terrorism is just one use for the technology. The researchers are currently working on a version for wind turbines. Tall turbine towers must be lit up at night with blinking lights to warn airplane and helicopter pilots. Unfortunately, the blinking bothers many people. Instead, wind turbines could be equipped with airplane detectors that switch the lights on only when a plane is approaching. Detectors that react to radio signals from airplanes already exist. "But we need a redundant system in case these break down - and PCL technology is well suited for that task," says Zemmari.

INFORMATION:


[Attachments] See images for this press release:
Mobile radio passive radar makes harbors safer

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

New floor covering can lead to breathing problems in babies

2014-12-15
Leipzig. New flooring in the living environment of pregnant women significantly increases the risk of infants to suffer from respiratory diseases in their first year of life. This is the result of a study carried out by the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) and the "St Georg" Municipal Hospital, which demonstrates that exposure to volatile organic compounds in the months before and after birth induces breathing problems in early childhood . The scientists therefore recommend that redecoration should be avoided during pregnancy or in the first year of children's ...

Skipping meals increases children's obesity and cardiometabolic risk

2014-12-15
Children who skip main meals are more likely to have excess body fat and an increased cardiometabolic risk already at the age of 6 to 8 years, according to a Finnish study. A higher consumption of sugary drinks, red meat and low-fat margarine and a lower consumption of vegetable oil are also related to a higher cardiometabolic risk. "The more of these factors are present, the higher the risk," says Ms Aino-Maija Eloranta, MHSc, who presented the results in her doctoral thesis at the University of Eastern Finland. The dietary habits, eating behaviour and dietary determinants ...

Less than half of parents think their 18-year-olds can make a doctors appointment

2014-12-15
ANN ARBOR, Mich. - Most parents agree their children should be ready to move out of the pediatrician's office into adult-focused care by age 18 - but just 30 percent actually make that transition by that age, according to the University of Michigan C.S. Mott Children's Hospital National Poll on Children's Health. As health care becomes more complex, it's difficult for teens to shift from relying on their parents to taking on their own health care needs. The C.S. Mott National Poll on Children's Health asked a national sample of parents of adolescents and young adults ...

Climate change could leave cities more in the dark

Climate change could leave cities more in the dark
2014-12-15
Cities like Miami are all too familiar with hurricane-related power outages. But a Johns Hopkins University analysis finds climate change will give other major metro areas a lot to worry about in future storms. Johns Hopkins engineers created a computer model to predict the increasing vulnerability to hurricanes of power grids in major cities on or relatively near the Atlantic and Gulf coasts. They factored historic hurricane information in with plausible scenarios for future storm behavior, given a global rise in average temperatures. With that data, the team could pinpoint ...

Mathematicians prove the Umbral Moonshine Conjecture

2014-12-15
Monstrous moonshine, a quirky pattern of the monster group in theoretical math, has a shadow - umbral moonshine. Mathematicians have now proved this insight, known as the Umbral Moonshine Conjecture, offering a formula with potential applications for everything from number theory to geometry to quantum physics. "We've transformed the statement of the conjecture into something you could test, a finite calculation, and the conjecture proved to be true," says Ken Ono, a mathematician at Emory University. "Umbral moonshine has created a lot of excitement in the world of math ...

If cells can't move ... cancer can't grow

2014-12-15
By blocking a widespread enzyme, Centenary researchers have shown they can slow down the movement of cells and potentially stop tumours from spreading and growing. Using a new super-resolution microscope they've been able to see single molecules of the enzyme at work in a liver cancer cell line. Then they've used confocal microscopes to see how disrupting the enzyme slows down living cancer cells. The enzyme is DPP9 (dipeptidyl peptidase 9) which the researchers at the Centenary Institute and the Sydney Medical School were first to discover and clone, in 1999. Ever ...

NASA's watches Tropical Cyclone Bakung over open ocean

NASAs watches Tropical Cyclone Bakung over open ocean
2014-12-15
Tropical Cyclone Bakung is moving in a westerly direction over the open waters of the Southern Indian Ocean and NASA's Aqua satellite captured an image of the sea storm. Aqua passed over Bakung on Dec. 12 at 07:35 UTC (2:35 a.m. EST) and the MODIS instrument aboard took a visible image of the storm. The image showed that deeper convection (stronger currents of rising air that form the thunderstorms that make up the tropical cyclone) was occurring around the low-level center of circulation, so the center was not apparent in the MODIS imagery. The bulk of the clouds associated ...

Stanford professor discusses techniques for minimizing environmental impacts of fracking

2014-12-15
Natural gas from hydraulic fracturing generates income and, done well, can reduce greenhouse gas emissions, air pollution and water use compared to coal and even nuclear energy. However, widespread use of natural gas from fracking could slow the adoption of wind, solar and other renewables and, done poorly, release toxic chemicals into the environment. Robert Jackson, the Kevin and Michelle Douglas Professor of Environment and Energy at the Stanford School of Earth Sciences, will discuss how to minimize the water and air impacts of fracking and other unconventional energy-extraction ...

Stanford professor discusses benefits and costs of forest carbon projects

2014-12-15
Recent international climate talks have focused on the potential of reforestation and afforestation - planting trees in an area where there was no forest previously - to slow global warming. Increasingly, though, science is showing that planting more trees and increasing forest conservation can provide benefits beyond carbon storage, and that carbon-centric accounting is, in many cases, insufficient for climate mitigation policies. Robert Jackson, the Kevin and Michelle Douglas Professor of Environment and Energy at the Stanford School of Earth Sciences, will discuss ...

Stanford scientist examines ways to put stormwater to use in big cities

2014-12-15
Runoff from rainstorms in big cities can represent both threats and opportunities. Too much runoff in the wrong places causes flooding. Too little rainwater in the right places leads to dried-up creeks and rivers. Water that washes up pollution from city streets can dirty downstream watersheds. Figuring out the best solutions to these problems requires lots of data - data that are easy to get in highly developed countries, but much scarcer in others. On Dec. 15 at the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting in San Francisco, Perrine Hamel, a postdoctoral scholar with ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

New study shows biochar’s electrical properties can influence rice field methane emissions

Guangdong faces largest chikungunya outbreak on record

Tirzepatide improves blood sugar control in children aged 10-17 years with type 2 diabetes inadequately controlled on existing therapies (SURPASS-PEDS trial)

An old drug, in a low dose, shown to be safe and effective in preventing progression of type 1 diabetes in children and young people (MELD-ATG trial)

Study reports potential effects of verapamil in slowing progression of type 1 diabetes

Fresh hope for type 1 diabetes as daily pill that slows onset confirms promise at 2-year follow-up

New estimates predict over 4 million missing people who would be alive in 2025 if not for inadequate type 1 diabetes care

So what should we call this – a grue jay?

Chicago Quantum Exchange-led coalition advances to final round in NSF Engine competition

Study identifies candidates for therapeutic targets in pediatric germ cell tumors

Media alert: The global burden of CVD

Study illuminates contributing factors to blood vessel leakage

What nations around the world can learn from Ukraine

Mixing tree species does not always make forests more drought-resilient

Public confidence in U.S. health agencies slides, fueled by declines among Democrats

“Quantum squeezing” a nanoscale particle for the first time

El Niño spurs extreme daily rain events despite drier monsoons in India

Two studies explore the genomic diversity of deadly mosquito vectors

Zebra finches categorize their vocal calls by meaning

Analysis challenges conventional wisdom about partisan support for US science funding

New model can accurately predict a forest’s future

‘Like talking on the telephone’: Quantum computing engineers get atoms chatting long distance

Genomic evolution of major malaria-transmitting mosquito species uncovered

Overcoming the barriers of hydrogen storage with a low-temperature hydrogen battery

Tuberculosis vulnerability of people with HIV: a viral protein implicated

Partnership with Kenya's Turkana community helps scientists discover genes involved in adaptation to desert living

Decoding the selfish gene, from evolutionary cheaters to disease control

Major review highlights latest evidence on real-time test for blood – clotting in childbirth emergencies

Inspired by bacteria’s defense strategies

Research spotlight: Combination therapy shows promise for overcoming treatment resistance in glioblastoma

[Press-News.org] Mobile radio passive radar makes harbors safer