Speaking with Defense Advancement, Sunhillo Corporation discussed how integrated radar, Automatic Dependent Surveillance–Broadcast (ADS-B) and surveillance data technologies can support tactical airspace awareness for military Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) operations around training areas, firing ranges and operational airspace.
Doug Walczak, Director of Marketing | UAS Business Development at Sunhillo, explained that the company’s systems are deployed across every branch of the U.S. military, supporting range safety, ground-based sense-and-avoid and aircraft tracking. By combining radar, ADS-B, Remote ID and other surveillance feeds, the architecture can provide operators with a consolidated picture of crewed and uncrewed aircraft.
“Situational awareness of operational environments is critical to UAS operations,”
Supporting Range Safety and Training Operations
Sunhillo’s Surveillance Monitoring System can operate without an internet connection and provides geographic filters, configurable areas of interest, and visual/audible alerts.
Operators can receive warnings when aircraft enter defined airspace and filter out traffic that is not relevant to the mission. Altitude-based filters can also be configured, such as removing targets above 10,000 feet when they are not operationally significant. By reducing screen clutter and directing attention toward mission-relevant aircraft, these capabilities support safer operations, greater efficiency and improved training throughput in complex or high-tempo environments.
Each range operation received two 48-inch displays at the fire desk, providing personnel with a detailed view of surrounding aircraft activity. The architecture processes ten surveillance feeds from Short Range Radars, Long Range Radars, Multifunction Array Radar and ADS-B sources. It also allows surveillance data to be shared between the ranges, providing circuitous redundancy across the network.
Installation and training were completed in time to support the Northern Edge exercise in May 2021. Sunhillo states that the system remains in use, supporting range safety, operational efficiency and training throughput across the participating locations.
Deployable ADS-B Awareness
ADS-B information can be acquired through Sunhillo’s Margate II receiver, which accepts and decodes 978 MHz Universal Access Transceiver and 1090 MHz Extended Squitter transmissions.
Margate-II-ADS-B-Receiver
Developed to meet or exceed DO-260B and DO-282 standards, the field-deployed receiver is used for military situational awareness and UAS applications, including ground-based sense-and-avoid.
The receiver is available in AC- and DC-powered configurations. According to Walczak, the DC version was developed specifically for Marine Corps deployment aboard rapid all-terrain vehicles and can be used for testing in the United States and operational deployments overseas.
Sunhillo’s Margate II is also used to support the US Army Ground-Based Sense & Avoid (GBSAA) and the US Air Force’s Tactical Operations Center-Light (TOC-L) providing situational awareness of ADS-B equipped aircraft utilizing a mobile command infrastructure.
Integrating Multiple Surveillance Sources
Radar and other surveillance feeds can be connected through Sunhillo’s Brigantine SGP, Longport and RICI interface systems.
Walczak explained that Sunhillo’s radar-agnostic approach and library of surveillance protocols allow radar and ADS-B feeds to be acquired and converted into the formats required by receiving displays or operational systems. This supports integration with different sensor types, including small portable radars and aviation-capable air traffic control radars.
SureLine’s layered architecture also enables custom integration. Its MPS API connections can provide radar protocols to user-developed applications through the associated software development kit.
Sunhillo is also deploying a cloud-based version of SureLine to support ongoing Beyond Visual Line Of Sight (BVLOS) operations, including MICH-AIR in Battle Creek, Michigan, and SAFE-T in Tulsa, Oklahoma. These deployments extend the software’s surveillance-data integration capabilities into emerging BVLOS applications.
Where overlapping sensors generate duplicate reports, Sunhillo’s Multi-Track Fuser can eliminate duplicate tracks and help declutter the operator’s display.
“With multiple overlapping sensors we can deploy our Multi-Track fuser to eliminate duplicate tracks and declutter the screen,”
By integrating radar, ADS-B and other surveillance sources, Sunhillo’s systems are designed to provide military operators with a clearer picture of crewed and uncrewed aircraft around firing ranges, training areas and operational airspace.
