The European Passive Radar Project PADIC has started

The European Defence Industrial Development Program project “Passive Acquisition by Digital Convergence” (PADIC) will develop a coastal radar network system with an open architecture; connecting passive, digital sensors of different types. Passive radars use reflections of signals from TV and radio stations, mobile network base stations and added transmitters to detect objects on land, at sea and in the air.

PADIC will study, design, prototype and test a coastal radar network system in response to emerging threats by further developing state-of-the-art sensors that are spectrally non-congesting during peacetime and sustainable and immune against attack attempts during conflicts. The project will make use of low-cost and commercially available technologies and components.

A central problem with ground-based radars is their low life expectancy after conflict onset, since they are easily acquired by radar-detecting sensors, while being considered expensive when used for peace-time operations. Even worse, surging radar costs increases the high-value asset vulnerability, and the resulting sparse deployments leaving gaps for an adversary to exploit during conflict by means of e.g. cruise missiles and UxV drones, and in peacetime by smugglers, insurgents and traffickers using dangerous transportation means.

Accompanied by Patria, Rantelon and CAFA Tech, the PADIC project is coordinated by Saab. The project duration is 36 months (2021-2024). In the first year (2022), Functional Requirements Definition will be established, based on scenario analyses. Moreover, a System Concept and Architecture will be developed. In the second year (2023), the System Design and Developments and System Level Integrations will be done and a prototype will be developed. In the third year (2024), the PADIC system will be tested and demonstrated in Baltic coastal environments.

The kick-off have been a great success and good opportunity for the PADIC project members to meet and efficiently set-up the project. Saab will contribute with high-tech solutions such as assessment of fully digital innovative antennas, combined with software defined functions using functionally transparent hardware platforms.

Thomas Lindgren, representative from Saab and leader for the consortium

This is a great European opening and a new compelling milestone for PCL technology-based passive radar development. Patria is looking forward to the cooperation within PADIC team and confident that MUSCL passive radar offers performance and numerous features to form a solid, scalable and cost-efficient baseline for the PADIC system.

Mikko Viitaniemi, VP Sales & Marketing from Patria

The PADIC project on a multi-static passive radar system is a trustworthy platform and regional gateway for the cooperation of SMEs within the leading North-European high-tech electronic industry. The development of radar wideband receiver module is the most critical of Rantelon’s tasks within radar hardware manufacturing.

Karl Taklaja, CEO of Rantelon

Considering Estonia’s long coastline, the PADIC system has a good perspective to support Estonia’s coastal defence and border guard. CAFA Tech is contributing to the PADIC project’s sensor data analytics with Artificial and Convolutional Neural Networks to analyse the huge amount of data collected by passive radars in near real-time (under 1 sec).

Tanel Järvet, CEO of CAFA Tech

Source: Patria news release

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