Cambridge Pixel has announced its collaboration with thales, supplying advanced radar interface hardware and tracking technology as part of a significant investment by the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) aimed at enhancing the operational capabilities of the Royal Navy’s mine-hunting combat management systems.
Enhancing Mine Warfare Capabilities
the ORCA Program (Oceanographic reconnaissance Combat Architecture) was initiated to facilitate continuous improvements in the Royal Navy’s mine warfare command and control systems. By adopting a ‘plug and play’ open architecture, which is designed for seamless integration with various sensor suites, naval vessels and their crews will gain access to state-of-the-art mine-hunting technologies.
Integration with Existing Systems
Thales engineers required a solution to connect with the existing kelvin Hughes 1007 radars on their ships, ensuring compatibility with their multi-function consoles (MFCs).Cambridge Pixel provided its HPx-400e PCIe radar input cards to interface with the analogue radar video signals from the 1007 radars,along with the SPx Server application software. This setup delivers radar video in ASTERIX CAT-240 format and target track data in NMEA format to the Thales TACTICOS system.
High-Performance Radar Acquisition
The HPx-400e from Cambridge Pixel is a robust PCI Express radar acquisition card that supports single or dual stream operations. It is capable of capturing and processing both analogue and digital radar video from up to two independent radar systems. The dual-stream variant of the HPx-400e offers multiple input modes, including dual redundancy and fully independent dual-stream capture, enhancing reliability and performance.
advanced Target tracking
Cambridge Pixel’s SPx Server application functions as a commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) radar data extractor and target tracker.It interfaces with hardware or network radar video, accepting polar format primary or IFF radar video. The SPx Server processes this data to identify targets, correlating them across scans to provide positional and motion updates, thereby improving situational awareness.
Expert Insights
Rob Helliar, Head of Customer Solutions at Cambridge Pixel, stated: “It has been an honor to contribute to such a crucial upgrade initiative, ensuring the UK’s mine countermeasure capabilities remain robust for the foreseeable future. Our solutions offer a clear upgrade pathway for integrators looking to modernize and implement open architectures.”
Simon Thomas, Head of Engineering for MCM at Thales, added: “The Cambridge Pixel solution facilitated a seamless and swift integration with the existing analogue Kelvin Hughes Radar system. It provides essential radar video overlays and tracks on above-water tactical displays, delivering the critical situational awareness necessary for triumphant mine-hunting operations.”
