Archimede: Integrated Network-Centric Harbour Protection System

Confined/inshore waters may represent the best type of environment for the conduct of clandestine operations, especially from the sea: the features of such an environment weaken the detection and identification processes carried out by the defenders, while allowing the covert execution of illegal activities, as well as a better exploitation of surprise. The most significant illegal activities conducted in such an environment include infiltration, drugs/weapons smuggling, sabotage/disruption of infrastructures, up to terrorist acts; these activities are accomplished through the use of a variety of means of transportation, which include cigarette boats and power boats, rigid hull inflatable boats (RHIBs), Ashing vessels, sailing/leisure boats, midgets, swimmers/divers (with open/closed breathing systems), and swimmer delivery vehicles (SDV). Requirements as flexibility, rapid reaction, resilience, fast deployment, high level automation, modularity, plug & play have a key role in modern surveillance architecture definition. The paper will describe the guidelines adopted to develop a CIP (Critical Infrastructure Protection) tactical architecture in accordance with the previous requirements. The CIP system integrates different types of sensors (e.g. radar, IR, TV, SONAR, underwater acoustic network) and classes of vehicles (Surface, Underwater, Air Unmanned Vehicles) which cooperate in a multi environmental scenario (above water, under water, sea surface, ground and air). The focus is to develop the following functionalities: fuse, classify, identify and present all the data provided by the sensors and consequently generate warnings on the Command and Control (C2) and interact automatically with the console. The integration is performed to guarantee flexibility and modularity by means of tactical gateways developed in order to decouple the C2 system from sensor systems and vehicles. In particular, these gateways are designed to translate the subsystem proprietary data in a unique format. This allows integrating every kind and numbers of systems tailoring each time the specific gateway without modifying sensors, vehicles or C2. The system shows Network-Centric features and a wide set of growth above capabilities, even vehicles/sensors swarms, due to the gateway implementing a flexible middleware oriented to publisher/subscriber philosophy.