Digital Radar Data Recording Systems

Witness is a powerful and cost effective tool that provides a permanent and complete record of radar pictures on a compact video cassette, showing target movements and incidents as witnessed by the radar itself.

AIT's Witness Raw Radar Video Recording System permits the total recording of radar data from a radar installation together with additional information on system settings, operator actions and display controls if desired.

The unique benefits of the Witness can best be appreciated in the light of the limitations of other approaches to recording radar. The simplest method although perhaps the least satisfactory, is to photograph each screenful of information. However, this means that one display must be exclusively reserved for the camera, viewing must wait until film is developed and images cannot be re-injected into the system to mention three obvious shortcomings. A second method involves electronically converting data into a television type raster format. With this approach, images can be stored on ordinary video tape, but the resolution is poor and once again the data cannot be re-processed by the original radar equipment. The Hindsight Witness provides interfaces for all common radar signals -trigger, video, azimuth and a heading marker. The value of this system lies in the tact that it is designed to reproduce radar data in the same format as it was recorded Processing and display systems treat a Witness recording just like live data. The Witness reproduces the complete radar environment, from the richness of detail in the original data to the actual presentation of that information, thereby providing an unmatched resource for analysis and training.