Surveillance Unattended Foliage Penetrating Radar for Border Control and Homeland Protection

The increasing request for safety, security and environment protection at local and national level reveal the deficiency of the traditional surveillance and control centers to satisfy the needs and requirements of modern border control systems for homeland protection where land border is expected to be monitored as well as the maritime one. This is, for instance, the case of any land border affected by hidden immigration and/or illegal traffics as well as any small areas such as critical infrastructures or military/ civilian posts in forest or jungle environment characterized by vegetation. In such challenging environment, logistics constraints strongly recommend to have very low power devices able to operate months or years without maintenance. A such scenario should be the perfect place for implementing an Unattended Ground Sensors (UGS) network making use FOliage PENetration (FOPEN) radar for border control. The paper aims to present the basic characteristics and preliminary results of a Surveillance Unattended FOPEN (SUF) radar suitable for detecting moving targets, people or vehicles, in dense forest environment.