LOW COST WIRE DETECTION SYSTEM

Dr Petras Avizonis,. Trex Enterprises, San Diego, California Bruce Barron, Trex Enterprises, San Diego, California

Abstract
Power lines have always been of primary concern to helicopter pilots. In the past laser based systems have been built to alert the pilot to power lines in the flight path. These systems were heavy, required high power, suffered from high false alarm rates and were not considered cost effective even for military helicopters. Using a simple cw diode laser with a unique range determination system and a novel filtering algorithm, we have developed a system that is suitable as a standalone system for even the cost sensitive civil market.

very expensive ($120,000 - $250,000), heavy, used significant power (and needed a way to dissipate this power) and were quite susceptible to false alarms. There has also been concern on how to present all of the data. to the pilot without creating an information overload. Trex has reexamined the issue from a different point of view, and . using three significant breakthroughs has developed a warning system that should cost under $15,000 in production quantities.

Approach
Past approaches tell the pilot where all hazards are located. Trex has taken a different approach. Our system is designed to tell the pilot if he has a clear path ahead. Instead of using a power consuming volume filling scan, we use a peripheral scan. We scan along the surface of a cone and detect hazards as they cross the edge of this scan. This has a number of favorable features. Since we are only scanning along a surface rather than trying to fill a volume of space, we can use much less laser power. Rather than a pulsed system with all of its optical complexity, high cost and high power, our approach lets us get by with a single cw laser diode. With a volume filling scan, the scans typically take half to one second to complete. Even with interlacing there is a chance of missing a target due to aircraft dynamics during the scan. In addition, due to this long scan time, every return or noise spike has to be considered a possible target resulting in a large false alarm rate. Since we are only scanning along a surface and we are using a cw device,

Introduction
Powerlines, as well as towers, poles and isolated tress have always been a major concern to helicopter pilots. The U.S. Army reports that they have lost more helicopters due to hitting powerlines than they have to combat. A review of their Safety Center data shows that a majority of these collisions occur during daylight VFR weather. A review of FAA data shows the similar results for civilian aircraft. Military pilots as well as services such as police, news services and MedEvac services get involved in other aspects of their flights (eg other air traffic, events on the ground, etc) that they dont see the wires in time to avoid them. In the past the military has had a number of programs to develop systems to give the pilots a display showing all of the wires, etc in the aircrafts flight path. These systems, using pulsed lasers, tried filling large volumes of space with optical energy to provide a full image of what lie ahead. These systems were

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we scan much faster; typically 6 milliseconds per scan. At this rate, we are insensitive to aircraft motion. It also permits us to collect multiple samples before alerting the pilot of a potenti a1 hazard.

Breakthroughs
In addition to the change in philosophy, our approach is based on three technological breakthroughs.

Dynamic Parallax Rather than just tell the pilot that he has an All Clear it is necessary to tell the pilot how far away and in what general direction hazards ore located. This tells him where to look and how soon he must initiate evasive action. Pulsed systems determine range to target by measuring the time delay between a transmitted pulse and the return signal. This cant be done with a cw system. If the pilot was only interested in a small range or distances then a focused optical system could be used. Since range information is required, and a number of ranges is required this approach cannot be used either. Instead we use what we call dynamic parallax. The collimated laser beam is transmitted at an angle through a prism spun at high speed. (See Figure 1) The beam emerges through this prism traveling along the surface of a cone. The energy is reflected off of a target and returns along the same path. If everything were static, the energy would be returned along an axis parallel to the laser diode. However, everything is not static. During the time of flight of the laser, the prism has rotated a small amount. As a result the returned energy path is displaced with the displacement being a function of how far the prism has rotated during the photons time of flight. By using a series of detectors and centroiding the received signal, the time of flight and therefore range is determined. The direction of the target is determined by when the return is received and referenced to the prism rotation orientation (encoder).

Figure 1 - Optics

Multi-phase Background Normalization (MPBN) One of the problems that has plagued previous wire detection systems has been background radiation from the sun or other sources known as clutter. We have developed a scheme to eliminate this problem. We place an additional detector in a position equivalent to a negative range which will see the same background as the other range detectors just before the range detectors. The signal received by this detector is appropriately phase shifted and subtracted from the signals received by all the of other detector cells. Any signal

Figure 2 MPBN
remaining after this subtraction is the result of reflected laser energy (or detector noise) only with background energy removed. (Figure 2)

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Event Filter Because of our short scan times we maintain a sliding window average of the signal in each range/direction bin. We do not declare a target unless we detect returned energy more than a given faction of the time in that bin. Single noise spikes are ignored.

System Performance - Breadboard

A breadboard system was built on an optical bench (Figure 3) and tested in the field. Figure 4 shows results of one such test. In this

Rcal Wire Data - 24 June,1999

Figure 4 - Field Test

and position bins of 5 degrees of sweep along the cone.

Figure 3 - Breadboard System

figure the light circle shows the scan circle superimposed on a photograph taken of powerlines in front of a hill. The red dots (wires) indicate returns from close objects. Yellow dots indicate returns from further targets (neared portions of the hill). The remainder of the hill is beyond the set range of interest so isn't shown as a potential problem.

Brassboard
A flightworthy brassboard system is currently undergoing laboratory testing and will be flight tested just after the first of the year. This unit is designed to detect wires as small as ,A" diameter at ranges up to 300 meters. This is independent of wire orientation. The system will isolate returns into range bins of 50 meters

A simple, low cost display (figure 5 ) is also planned for this flight test. To minimize information overload this display has been simplified to display 3 range bins and position octants. When there are no hazards within the aircraft's flightpath, the green light in the center of the display will be illuminated. When hazards are detected between 150 meters and the outside range threshold (typically set to 250 meters) an amber LED(s) will light to indicate the octant where the hazard(s) is (are) located. A momentary aural warning will also be given to alert the pilot to check the display.

When the aircraft closes to 100 to 150 meters of a hazard, the amber LED in the middle ring of the display will light. When the aircraft closes to less than 100 meters from a hazard the appropriate red LED(s) will light and a steady aural warning will be given until manually reset.

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Laser
Initial evaluations will be performed using an 830 nm laser. It is intended to use this wavelength for the production configuration because of low cost diodes and detectors available at this wavelength. At the power levels being used the system is operationally eye safe. We have also evaluated the use of 1.5 microns should it become necessary to use this wavelength for safety approval though this will increase the cost.

Authors
Dr Petras A vizonis Ph.D. Physics 1997, University of Maryland at College Park, M.S. Physics 1995, University of Maryland at College Park, B.S. Physics 1989, University of New Mexico. Staff Scientist at Trex Enterprises, system development and integration for optical windspeed lidar and aircraft hazard sensing system. Previously employed as an engineer at Rockwell Power Systems in Albuquerque involved in coherent imaging with fiber optics and high power laser cavity design. Bruce Barron BSEE MIT 1967, Masters of Project Management Keller 1994. Director of Aviation Product Development for Trex Enterprises. Formerly positions include Team Leader, Flight Controls and Navigation Systems for AH-64D Longbow Apache Helicopter, Technical Director Flight Controls / Vehicle Management Systems for YF-22, F-117, Israeli Lavi. Also responsible for preliminary design of 777 Actuator Control Electronics. Mr Barron also designed the electronics for the first Sidewinder class missiles to slave to the pilots helmet and a Laser Guided Cannon Launched Projectile (ie Tank Shell). Mr Barron also had a key role in the design and flight test of the DC10 Automatic Landing System. Mr Barron is a pilot and a former aircraft owner.

Production
Every design aspect of this system has been driven by the requirement for lowest production cost. Although there is only one critical optical alignment none of the alignments are difficult. There are no

Figure 5 Cockpit Display

mechanical tolerances that cannot easily be met. A majority of components are available of the shelf and from multiple sources Our initial estimates place the high volume recurring production price well below $15,000 (before amortization of certification costs)

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OPTICAL DRIFT DETECTOR

Bruce Barron, Trex Enterprises, San Diego, California Dr Petras Avizonis. Trex Enterprises, San Diego, California

Abstract
The Embedded GPS INS (EGI) has become the primary navigation sensor for aircraft. The system however does not solve all of the needs of the military helicopter for either en route navigation or as a hover hold position sensor. The ground velocity signals from a Doppler Navigation System (DNS) are currently used as inputs to the navigation Kalman filter to augment the navigation solution. By replacing the DNS with a continuously swept cw laser, we can eliminate the problems inherent with these RF based sensors.

Doppler shift as a result of the motion in the direction of the beam. If a beam hits a specular surface (such as a smooth surface or calm water), insufficient energy is reflected back towards the aircraft to make a valid measurement. The systems also tend to have dropouts when the aircraft is maneuvering. Trex Enterprises is developing an optical system that is less susceptible to these problems, is lighter, lower cost and more covert than the traditional designs. Rather than aiming a beam in four discrete directions, the Trex design sweeps a laser beam continuously along the surface of a cone. The returned energy is detected directly rather than by heterodyning with the transmitted signal, and the signal is processed continuously using a unique algorithm to determine the direct-detected Doppler shift.

Introduction
The Embedded GPS INS (EGI) is an excellent navigation device, however, it does not solve all navigational needs especially with regard to military rotorcraft. While EGI is ideal for long range navigation for high flying aircraft, it does not provide a total solution for the rotorcraft segment. Rotorcraft often fly through canyons, both natural and manmade, where they do not have line of sight to four satellites. In addition, some rotorcraft have tight requirements for a drift free hoverhold. For example, the AH-64D Longbow helicopter has a requirement to drift less than 4 meters in 5 minutes. The EGI, even with 4 satellites in view, does not support this requirement. To satisfy these requirements it has been necessary to include a Doppler Navigation Sensor to the EGI's Kalman filter DNS works by projecting four microwave beams along the edges of a rectangular pyramid. Some of the RF energy is reflected back towards the aircraft with a

Hardware
The hardware is shown schematically in Figure 1. The laser is a single diode operating in a cw mode. The laser energy is collimated and aimed at a spinning mirror. The light reflected off this mirror travels along the surface of a cone. The centerline of this cone is aimed down when the aircraft is in its normal flight attitude. The light is reflected off the ground and some of this energy is scattered back towards the sensor. Scattered energy is collected by a telescope in the sensor, where the light is passed through a sequence of polarizers and atomic line filters (ALF)'. The ALF consists of a small (1 cm diameter x 1.5 cm long) optical cell containing cesium vapor in a magnetic field. The polarization of light passing through the ALF is

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rotated due to anomalous dispersion. The amount of polarization rotation is a function of the frequency. The wavelength of the laser and the ALF is tuned (and maintained with a closed loop regulator) such that the laser wavelength is near the center of a sharply varying portion of the ALFs polarization curve. The output of the ALF then goes to a polarized beam splitter and the two resulting polarized beams go to a pair of photodetectors.

independent of the amplitude of the scattered light. Comparison of this signal to a reference signal (the transmitted light passed through the same optical system) provides an absolute reference to the magnitude of the measured shift. This is a direct measurement of the velocity component along the light propagation vector.

As the wavelength of the returned energy changes due to Doppler shifts, the transmission through the ALF system allows for direct measurement of the shift. This is due to the high sensitivity of the anomalous dispersion in Cesium vapor to frequency and polarization. The greater the frequency shift, the more of one polarization passes through the ALF and less of the other polarization. Two detectors sense the orthogonal components of the signal. By taking the ratio of the difference
/
\

Processing
The Doppler shift at any point in time is a function of the relative velocity vector parallel to the laser pointing direction. This system could be designed to emulate existing rf doppler systems by processing the data at four points during the scan - these four points occurring when the scan mirror is aiming along the same directions as these systems. This would work but would be susceptible to the same type problems plaguing the existing systems. Instead, since our energy source is cw and the scan is continuous, we process the signal throughout the scan. The detector outputs are sampled at a rate only limited by processor throughput and available memory. The data for a full scan is recorded in memory. A Fast Fourier Transform is then taken on this data. The Fourier coefficient for the DC term of the transform is proportional to the velocity parallel to the centerline of the scan cone. The coefficients for the two first order terms are proportional to the horizontal velocity components. By properly referencing the start of a data frame, these components will be along-track and cross-track. The energy in the higher order terms is a measure of system noise and can be used as a confidence factor as well as an input to the correlation matrix of the navigation systems Kalman filters. With a conventional 4 beam rf system, the system is forced into a hold mode when a return is lost from one (or two depending on the

9
AU st4 .

Figure 1 Optics
between the two detectors and their sum we get a signal that is directly proportional to the frequency shift (direct Doppler measurement),

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system) of these beams. With our approach as long a signal return is detected over any portion of the scan, velocity information is available.

v d

= V, sin(e)+cos (e)(V, sin (Q)+V, cos (Q))

Vd=kl Vz+k2 (v, sin (wt)+V, cos (wt))

Fourier Analysis
Our application of the Fourier transform is a somewhat unconventional approach. Normally a Fourier Transform is used to determine the frequency content of a signal. Instead, we use the transform to determine the relative magnitudes of known frequencies.

Status
We have built a proof of principal test unit by modifying a unit originally designed to measure wind speed (Figure 3) at ranges of 5

Figure 3 - Proof of Principal Unit

and 30 meters. Using this unit we have verified that both the hardware and processing algorithms perform their intended functions. Analysis shows that using a 30 degree half angle scan cone this system will measure velocities with an accuracy of 1 knot per axis and work at altitudes from a few feet from the surface to above 1000 feet in altitude. We estimate that a production system using this approach would cost less than $25,000 and weigh less than 25 pounds. References 1. J. Menders, K. Benson, S.H. Bloom, C.S. Liu and Eric Koevaar. Ultranarrow Line Filtering Using a C Faraday filter at 852 nm. s Optics Letters /Vol. 16, No.11 /June 1, 1991

Figure 2 -Scan Definitions

Analysis of the components that make up the Doppler velocity signal illustrate why this approach is valid. Vd = Doppler Velocity (Along Beam)
v h

= Horizontal Velocity

V, = Along Track Velocity V, = Cross Track Velocity V, = Vertical Velocity Vh = V, sin(Q2)+ V, cos(Q)
h Vd = V, sin (0) + v cos(0)

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Authors
Dr Petras Avizonis
Ph.D. Physics 1997, University of Maryland at College Park, M.S. Physics 1995, University of Maryland at College Park, B.S. Physics 1989, University of New Mexico. Staff Scientist at Trex Enterprises, system development and integration for optical windspeed lidar and aircraft hazard sensing system. Previously employed as an engineer at Rockwell Power Systems in Albuquerque involved in coherent imaging with fiber optics and high power laser cavity design.

Bruce Barron BSEE MIT 1967, Masters of Project Management Keller 1994. Director of Aviation Product Development for Trex Enterprises. Formerly positions include Team Leader, Flight Controls and Navigation Systems for AH-64D Longbow Apache Helicopter, Technical Director Flight Controls / Vehicle Management Systems for YF-22, F-117, Israeli Lavi. Also responsible for preliminary design of 777 Actuator Control Electronics. Mr Barron also designed the electronics for the first Sidewinder class missiles to slave to the pilots helmet and a Laser Guided Cannon Launched Projectile (ie Tank Shell). Mr Banon also had a key role in the design and flight test of the DC10 Automatic Landing System. Mr Barron is a pilot and a former aircraft owner.

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