Chandigarh, December 23
To boost its air defence set-up and enhance situational awareness capabilities, the IAF is going in for the induction of a "passive surveillance and electronic intelligence system" (PSEIS). The PSEIS will supplement the conventional radar coverage.
The system will generate a three-dimensional "air-situation picture" by providing location and tracking of airborne, ground and marine targets, regardless of whether these emit radiations or not, a request for information issued by the IAF a few days ago states.
The system would be capable of detection, location, identification and tracking of active and passive targets within its area of coverage. It would comprise of a cluster of sensor stations all reporting their detections simultaneously to the master receiving and processing centre that will process information for detection of targets and formation of tracks.
Typically, one system would comprise three to six sensor stations each (situated around by 20-35 km away) linked to one master control station. It would be possible to network many such systems deployed in a particular sector to generate an overall picture of the sector at a single master station.
The PSEIS, though ground-based, would be fully mobile and have a short set-up time. The passive surveillance module would generate a comprehensive air-situation picture through reception and processing of reflections of other transmissions in the radio frequency spectrum, while the electronic intelligence module would intercept, process, analyse and report all types of radar transmissions.
