Cambridge Pixel, a developer of radar display, tracking and recording sub-systems, has supplied its radar video trackers to Port of Dover for integration into CCTV and safety systems at Europe’s busiest ferry port.
“We are delighted to see our radar trackers and display software deployed to improve the safety at Europe’s busiest ferry port,” said David Johnson, CEO, Cambridge Pixel. “The radars with our trackers and display software will link to CCTV cameras to give port control officers greater ability to track, target, record and intercept vessels navigating dangerously.”
Engineers at Marico Marine in Southampton, England, needed a low cost, open, software-based radar tracker for integration with its new vessel traffic service (VTS) system. It was important that the tracker worked seamlessly with a range of proprietary radars and delivered plot merging capability to combine multiple echoes from large ship reflections into single plots.
The software also needed to be highly configurable to support the tracking of small and large vessels at short and long range and to allow the suppression of radar returns and tracks from terrain and harbour artefacts, such as buoys, to minimise false alarms. Radar recording for training and incident analysis was also a prerequisite.
For the Port of Dover installation, Cambridge Pixel has provided its SPx Server for radar video tracking and distribution, and its SPx library for display of scan converted radar video. SPx Server interfaces to each of the radars using their proprietary network connections and accepts input from an AIS receiver so that primary and AIS tracks can be viewed together. SPx Server also provides high quality radar video pre-processing to optimise tracking performance.
Dover is Europe’s busiest ferry port with 1,760 commercial shipping, 36,331 ferry and around 9,500 leisure craft movements passing through the port during 2017. The radar installation is designed to detect commercial and smaller private vessels at a significant distance from the port as well as monitoring the movement of vessels within the harbour.
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