Laser Search and Rescue (L-SAR) consists of an aircraft mounted “ground painting” laser that transmits, receives and discriminates reflections from an inexpensive reflective tape or patch applied to a vehicle (aircraft, vessel, life raft, etc.) or carried by a person in distress. When the equipment detects the laser reflection, the search crew is automatically alerted. Coordinate location of the reflector is also determined by the onboard equipment and displayed to the crew for closer examination of the site.
L-SAR provides the following benefits: (1) it consists of a light-weight portable instrument that can be employed by SAR forces using an assortment of aerial search platforms; (2) it uses passive location marking material which is crash survivable; (3) it can be used day or night and (4) it provides real time distress location data. It is a good weather instrument, so penetration of severe weather would be performed by SAR2.
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Concept of Operations: An aircraft equipped with L-SAR will fly over the search area at an altitude of approximately 1200 feet above ground level (AGL). As the aircraft proceeds a laser beam is swept perpendicular across the aircraft track over an 80-degree field of view. The sweep rate is two lines per second. The scan laser transmits two different distinct color beams. The retro-reflective material on the search objective is designed to reflect only one of the colors; therefore, reflections from the objective contain only that single color, while reflections from false reflections contain both colors. The detector in the receiver system uses this information to automatically discriminate the search objective from false returns. GPS integrated with the L-SAR system establishes the ground position of valid detections. |
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System
Parameters |
Proof-
of-Concept |
Production |
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Scan Width |
50° |
80° |
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Laser wavelength |
IR |
IR |
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Aircraft Altitude |
3,000 ft |
4,000 ft |
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Search Rate |
65 mi2/hr |
140 mi2/hr |
While SAR2 is used for wide area searches conducted at high altitude, L-SAR would be used for low altitude spot searches of targets identified by SAR2. Thus, L-SAR has the potential of becoming another tool, like SAR2 that can be used to improve the efficiency of search and rescue operations and result in the saving of additional lives and resources.
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