Cambridge Pixel supplies Kelvin Hughes with RadarView Radar Visualisation Software
Cambridge Pixel (www.cambridgepixel.com), a developer of sensor processing and display solutions, is supplying its RadarView PC-based radar display software to Kelvin Hughes (www.kelvinhughes.com), a world leader in the design and supply of surveillance radar solutions.
The software is to be used as a service display for the Kelvin Hughes range of VTS radars, including its innovative SharpEye™ solid-state radar transceiver.
Engineers within Kelvin Hughes’ Surveillance business in Hainault in the East of London, England, needed a cost effective radar maintenance display solution that supported alignment and verification of the radar video in situations where the radar is positioned remotely from the operator displays.
The solution also needed to interface with the Kelvin Hughes range of vessel traffic services (VTS) radars (the SBS product family), including its innovative SharpEye™ solid-state radar, which provides better detection of small targets than a conventional magnetron radar and is particularly useful for small target threat detection.
Kelvin Hughes’ Surveillance business is a global radar system solution provider meeting the surveillance, safety, and security needs of the world's navies, coastal and border operators, and security patrols.
Leigh Beeton, head of systems engineering within the Surveillance business at Kelvin Hughes, said: “We were looking for a cost effective, off-the-shelf solution for a radar display for set up and maintenance of our shore-based radar systems. We needed a solution that provided the required features and could operate on a readily available rack mounted PC. The Cambridge Pixel RadarView visualisation software provided this capability.
“We have been aware of the capabilities of Cambridge Pixel for some time and RadarView was our first choice for this application. Given the success of this project we are looking forward to working on future projects with the Cambridge Pixel team.”
Cambridge Pixel’s RadarView software interfaces to the radar video using the HPx-200 radar interface card, allowing video, trigger and azimuth signals to be received. The RadarView software presents a high-resolution radar display on standard PC hardware with a set of graphical options available to display the captured radar in PPI and A-Scan forms.
The ready-to-run RadarView software also allows radar video to be viewed in one or more windows using standard PC and graphics technology, which allows for considerable flexibility in hosting on low-cost hardware and distributing the radar image remotely using standard Windows capabilities.
Commenting on the contract, David Johnson, managing director at Cambridge Pixel, said: “We are delighted to be supplying our radar visualisation software to one of the world’s leading radar manufacturers with a history dating back two centuries. Our RadarView visualisation software is part of our SPx suite of software and is targeted towards configuration and maintenance of the radar and complements Kelvin Hughes own radar display products.”
Kelvin Hughes navigation and surveillance radars and displays are in service across the world, with over 30 navies, thousands of commercial marine vessels, VTS applications and offshore oil platforms.
Cambridge Pixel’s world-leading SPx suite of software libraries and applications provide highly flexible, ready-to-run software products for radar visualisation, radar video distribution, plot extraction and target tracking. Cambridge Pixel’s engineering team has decades of experience of developing complex radar processing and display systems for naval, air traffic control, vessel traffic, security and airborne radar applications.
