DeshGujarat

Porbandar, 18 August 2012

Union minister of defence AK Antony will launch a remote operation center of Coast Guard in Porbandar on 25th of August. This center will work as the Coast Guard surveillance centre under the Coastal Surveillance Scheme. Porbandar operation center would receive data from a lighthouses and towers along the coast. All information will be then integrated by an advanced “data fusion” techniques.

The Coastal Surveillance Scheme developed by defence PSU, Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL) relies on a chain of electro-optic sensors – i.e. radars, and day and night vision cameras – that are being installed on lighthouses and towers that look out at the Arabian Sea. The system allows the Remote Operating Station to remotely manipulate its coastal radars and cameras — through a Camera Management System — to observe suspicious objects in greater detail.

The cameras and radars are Israeli. The system also performs other tasks that include monitoring the health of the remote systems; and an alarm system that alerts the operators when a vessel enters a designated “sensitive zone”.

In Phase I, the coast guard is setting up 46 electro-optic sensor stations in high-threat areas, and 12 Remote Operating Stations. This will be expanded in Phase II to cover the entire coastline over the next three years. The most recent installations are radar stations in Dwarka and Navodra, which feed into a Remote Operating Station at Porbandar, about 100 kms away. Distance is irrelevant, with data being transmitted through two dedicated lines of 2 MBPS each.

The 12 Remote Operating Stations feed into one of the four Regional Operating Centres at Mumbai, Kochi, Chennai and Visakhapatanam. Finally, all this information is fed in real time to the apex Control Centre at New Delhi, where it is integrated into a single national-level picture.