Sensor grid

The outcome should contribute to:

• enhancing information superiority and situational awareness at European level by achieving effective, robust and efficient target surveillance and reconnaissance;
• performing a major step towards a European Integrated Air & Missile Defence (IAMD), contributing to European strategic autonomy and complementing capabilities of NATO allies;
• enhancing the cooperation of armed forces of EU Member States and EDF associated countries (Norway) and increase the interoperability among different sensors at European level.

Driven by the changing geopolitical situation, Europe is facing new and evolving threats that are smaller, faster, and more diverse, with increased manoeuvrability, in greater numbers and with denial-of-service capabilities. There is a strong need to detect and characterise challenging targets. Those include small size, high speed, low signature (stealthy) targets and targets in congested and contested electromagnetic environments, e.g. urban environments. There are various examples of such challenging targets that necessitate different configurations and range of active and passive sensors to be detectable such as UAS, hypersonic or ballistic missiles, stealth targets, swarms, etc.

Most of our potential adversaries have gained technological and operational knowledge in a number of sensor’s capabilities, including both active and passive sensing. It is obvious that the technological lead in sensors will provide a definite technological advantage for the fast and accurate shaping of situational awareness and battlefield management.

Moreover, European standards for the Concepts of Operations and Rules of Engagement aim at achieving positive target identification before any use of weapons to reduce fratricide and avoid unintended casualties or destruction. Optimal use of sensors in an architecture could increase the level of confidence to have accurately recognised and (if possible) identified a real threat with a low false alarm probability.

Specific objective

The EU Member States and EDF associated countries (Norway) already own or are developing a variety of high-end sensor equipment and weapon systems for defence against challenging targets. However, in most cases even at national level and most importantly at European level, existing systems still follow stand-alone concepts, that is not considering fusion of data from distributed networks of sensors and especially not cooperation between sensors. For the specific application of naval surveillance, efforts are addressing the exchange and fusion of plots of targets created by the different sensors, through domain-specific communication systems (e.g. through call EDF-2022-DA-NAVAL-NCS). There is the necessity for complementary efforts.

Indeed, facing new and challenging threats, requires building an even more collaborative real-time sensor network, where particular sensors’ capabilities will be optimally combined through a flexible architecture.

Such an integrated sensor network solution should encompass passive and active surveillance techniques based on different types of sensors working in different bands of the electro-magnetic spectrum (electro-optical and radio frequency) in order to collect information in a broad spectrum. Advantages of both stationary and mobile sensor platforms could be exploited, e.g. through sensor dynamic resource management. Information processing suitable for detection of new threats should be supported both close to the sensor and – after transferring the data – at a more central processing unit, where signal and data fusion could create a complete situational picture.

This approach is expected to considerably improve the military capabilities in detecting, tracking, recognising and eventually identifying novel challenging targets in the battlespace by increasing the probability of target detection, as well as track stability and creating a continuous real-time situational picture. This will provide a technologically competitive advantage in the fields of situational awareness, mission planning, support of decision making and eventually even fire control.

The proposals must address the establishment of a European Architecture Framework for multiple interoperable and collaborating sensors. Efforts should aim at overall sensor performance optimisation (e.g. in terms of coverage, accuracy and efficient use of electromagnetic spectrum) against diverse and evolving challenging threats. The Architecture Framework should enable the integration and optimal use of EU Member States and EDF associated countries (Norway) sensor assets that exist or are under development and collaborative use of the sensors data.

The architecture framework must be capable of integrating radar sensors and it should be capable of integrating other types of sensors such as electro-optical, acoustic or others with various modes of operation, such as ground-based and airborne, passive and active, stationary and mobile. The proposals may not include efforts on the integration of space assets that would create unnecessary duplications with ongoing and planned projects but may prepare the future combination of the different research and development results in the future.

The proposals should include aspects of flexible architectures and dynamic asset and resource management for real-time planning of sensor grids adaptable to different tasks, threats and situations. The proposals may not address the development of new sensors.

The proposals should address aspects of data exchange and data fusion between sensors and command centres. The proposals may provide the creation and maintenance of a shared common picture of available sensors and effectors.

The proposals must address surveillance tasks and tracking and aim at improved accuracy of threat detection, tracking and classification of targets. Activities proposed may extend to the field of fire control to advanced effectors in a network. The proposals must be suited to support Integrated Air & Missile Defence (IAMD) operations. Additionally, the proposed architecture framework should be capable of addressing other types of targets or domains of application (e.g. drone detection, swarm detection).

The proposals must address cybersecurity aspects as integral part of the architecture consideration.

In addition, the proposals must substantiate synergies and complementarity with foreseen, ongoing or completed activities in the field of Integrated Air & Missile Defence, notably those performed or foreseen in the context of the PESCO initiative TWISTER and the call topics EDF-2021-AIRDEF-D-EATMI and EDF-2022-DA-SPACE-SBMEW, as well as other projects in the field of radar technologies, e.g. in the EDA framework.

The proposals should take into account projects with related challenges concerning the integration of heterogeneous sensors, such as the call US-03-2019 of the Preparatory Action on Defence Research, which addressed the integration of heterogeneous drone-carried sensors, and the establishment of a collaborative surveillance network such as in the call topic EDF-2022-DA-NAVAL-NCS, by aiming at complementary outcomes. The proposals should also ensure compatibility with ongoing projects in other frameworks, in particular efforts to establish surveillance networks in the NATO context.

The proposals may not particularly focus on the use of over-the-horizon radars using sky-wave propagation as addressed by the call topic EDF-2021-DIS-RDIS-OTHR.

Types of activities

The following table lists the types of activities which are eligible for this topic, and whether they are mandatory or optional (see Article 10(3) EDF Regulation):

The proposals must cover at least the following tasks as part of the mandatory activities:

• Studies:
  • define operationally realistic use cases (i.e. threat descriptions, sensor grid constellation, communication network requirements…) and define adequate performance indicators;
  • definition and modelling of objectives, tasks and threats to determine assignments and settings of sensors, and optionally effectors;
  • execute and analyse performance simulations to evaluate the potential added value of the architecture;
  • investigate a concept for sensor planning and dynamic resource management on different command levels, based on available or new dynamic resource management solutions.
• Design:
  • integrate sensor planning and dynamic resource management in the architecture framework;
  • describe the top-level architecture;
  • define the communication network architecture and requirements;
  • establish the required Quality-of-Service needs for contributing sensors;
  • define the timing and geographic positioning needs for operating a sensor grid;
  • include or establish a protocol enabling flexible integration and elimination of assets from the network;
• System prototyping:
  • prepare a prototype implementing the architecture;
• Testing:
  • perform a demonstration of the added-value of the architecture using various European assets;
  • analyse the results in terms of quality of service and key performance indicators.

Additionally, the proposals should cover the following tasks:

• Studies:
  • to investigate modern signal processing, advanced sensors and data fusion and decision support (e.g. using artificial intelligence, machine learning) to achieve better target information extraction and complementarity between different sensors;
• Design:
  • adaptation of existing C2 interfaces.

The proposals may also cover the following tasks:

• Design:
  • to design the necessary algorithms to achieve better target information extraction and complementarity between different sensors, using modern signal processing, advanced sensors and data fusion and decision support;
• System prototyping:
  • establishment of new user interfaces.

Moreover:

• projects addressing activities referred to in point (d) above must be based on harmonised defence capability requirements jointly agreed by at least two Member States or EDF associated countries (or, if studies within the meaning of point (c) are still needed to define the requirements, at least on the joint intent to agree on them)
• projects addressing activities referred to in points (e) to (h) above, must be:
  • supported by at least two Member States or EDF associated countries that intend to procure the final product or use the technology in a coordinated manner, including through joint procurement

and

• • based on common technical specifications jointly agreed by the Member States or EDF associated countries that are to co-finance the action or that intend to jointly procure the final product or to jointly use the technology (or, if design within the meaning of point (d) is still needed to define the specifications, at least on the joint intent to agree on them).

Functional requirements

The proposed development should meet the following functional requirements:

• the architecture should be able to incorporate information from sensors being used within the Member States and EDF associated countries (Norway);
• the architecture should use the available information to optimally set up its attached sensors, given a certain task and taking into account sensors’ spatial diversity, complementary sensing geometries and measurement error statistics;
• the architecture should have a certain level of control over its attached sensors (e.g. concerning their modes of operation);
• the solution should enable data fusion from multiple and possibly moving sensor nodes as well as information transmission to multiple potentially mobile military command centres;
• the architecture should be scalable and be able to establish small networks (a few sensors locally) to large networks of sensors (large amount of sensors placed in multiple countries);
• the architecture solution should be able to assess its current performance;
• the solution should allow dynamic and real-time planning of the integration and configuration of heterogeneous sensors to adapt the sensors grid to the mission;
• the solution should be able to adapt the network and sensors’ settings to optimise the performance of each sensor by taking advantage of information gathered by other sensors. Each sensor of the grid should be able to compensate some of the detection and discrimination limitations of the others, thus offering better overall performance;
• the solution should improve the detection, classification, identification and continuous tracking of single and multiple airborne, ground and seaborne threats (such as small size, high speed, low contrast, camouflaged, in degraded visual environment, in an urban environment, UAS/UAV/Drones, hypersonic/ballistic missiles, stealth targets, cruise missiles, etc.);
• the solution should be adaptable towards future threat evolutions;
• the solution should be in line with operational doctrines and systems of EU Member States and EDF associated countries (Norway). The resulting architecture and standards need to be open for all EU Member States and EDF associated countries (Norway);
• the solution should be compatible with efforts to establish surveillance networks in the NATO context;
• the solution should support efficient electromagnetic spectrum management;
• the solution should mitigate performance limitations caused by intentional or non-intentional interference in the electromagnetic spectrum, e.g. through the use of multiple sensors and communication systems operating in diverse spectrum bands, through adapting sensors settings, etc.;
• the architecture framework should take into account cybersecurity;

Optionally, the solution may be able to make use of threat libraries to support different types of sensors to detect and classify targets.