Environmental Awareness for Sensor and Emitter Employment

CRREL
Published Nov. 19, 2012
Output from EASEE displayed on Google Earth. Shown are areas of detection (green) and non-detection (red).

Output from EASEE displayed on Google Earth. Shown are areas of detection (green) and non-detection (red).

EASEE interface for Windows. Users can rapidly place sensors on the terrain and select calculation type.

EASEE interface for Windows. Users can rapidly place sensors on the terrain and select calculation type.

Environmental Awareness for Sensor and Emitter Employment (EASEE) can help commanders employ their force protection sensors optimally and choose UAS (unmanned aircraft systems) routes to minimize audibility. These capabilities are provided in a software package that can be run easily on a laptop.

Critical Situational Awareness at Your Fingertips

Sensing technologies play an increasingly important role in a variety of battlefield and security applications. However, the real-world performance of sensors is complicated by changing weather and terrain conditions. With increasing sensor variety and complexity, it becomes more challenging for users to select and place sensors in a manner optimal to accomplishing their mission objectives. Commanders need a tool to determine where to place sensors for detection of intruders or determining the reach of a source signature (emitter).

The Environmental Awareness for Sensor and Emitter Employment (EASEE) tool provides non-expert users access to the most advanced, computationally efficient acoustic, seismic, and line of sight models to predict sensor performance and emitter propagation distances. It is a simple mouse- and menu-driven program that can run on a laptop.

Capabilities

  • Predict sensor performance incorporating terrain and weather effects
  • Rapidly determine sensor placement given user input for target type and sensor availability (extensive sensor library available)
  • Lay out an unattended ground sensor (UGS) network, e.g., for surveillance around a combat outpost
  • Identify coverage gaps in sensor network resulting from terrain/atmospheric conditions
  • Detect standoff distances for aircraft and ground vehicles
  • Predict noise impacts on civilian populations around Army installations

Sample Applications

EASEE has been transitioned to dozens of users throughout DoD, including the Deployable Force Protection (DFP) project, which provides technologies enabling protection of combat outposts.

Current Status

  • Acoustics, seismic, and line-of-sight calculations incorporated to date. Implementation of optical, infrared, and chem/bio capabilities is underway.
  • Aircraft directional signatures are now built into the code and will be interfaced with NASA directionality database.
  • User-friendly, Matlab-based “standalone” interface completed; Java OpenMap and Raptor-X interfaces have been initiated. Software design facilitates incorporation into a variety of software architectures.
  • Models have been incorporated for fixed-wing aircraft, helicopters, indirect fire weapons, missiles, ground wheeled vehicles, ground tracked vehicles, unattended aerial systems, unattended ground sensors, and human hearing and vision.

Features

  • Highly modular, object-oriented software design is easily adapted to a variety of applications
  • Advanced weather, terrain, and platform directionality effects on signal emissions and propagation
  • Extensive acoustic and seismic target signature database
  • Detailed sensor and data processing models
  • High-resolution terrain elevations and map features
  • Advanced human auditory models
  • Export predictions to other programs
  • Expandable to accommodate many different signal modalities (acoustic, seismic, optical, RF, CBRNE, …)
  • Optimal Sensor Placement Tool, which can quickly determine a sensor placement given terrain-based constraints and coverage preferences
  • Automatic assessment of predictive uncertainty resulting from modeling limitations
  • Weather forecast retrieval from AFWA (Air Force Weather Agency) via internet has been implemented
  • Planned Features:
    • More signal modalities (radio frequency, infrared, microwave, chemical, biological, etc.)
    • Moving sources and sensors
    • Improved directional models for source emissions
    • Continued integration with various GIS software technologies (such as Google Earth and ArcGIS) and support for geographic files formats such as KMZ, GeoTIFF, and ESRI Shapefiles

Background & Collaboration

EASEE was developed at ERDC’s Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory (CRREL). Development of EASEE began in 2007, based in part on SPEBE (Sensor Performance Evaluator for Battlefield Environments).

 The main design goals of EASEE are flexibility, incorporation of multiple sensor modalities, assessment of predictive uncertainty (including quality of input data), and sensor placement recommendations. Inquiries from parties interested in collaborating with the ERDC on further development of the EASEE software are welcome.

Distribution

EASEE is available to DoD agencies upon request. Further distribution of the software without permission from ERDC is prohibited.

Contact

ERDCinfo@usace.army.mil, 603 646 4764
Updated 15 August 2020

Signature Physics Branch
U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center | Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory
 


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