Advances in ported coaxial cable technology

Ported coaxial cable sensors for outdoor intrusion detection have been commercially available since the late 1970's. Also known as "leaky cable" and "guided radar" sensors, the technology uses buried leaky coaxial cables to establish a terrain-following covert detection zone. By operating in the Very High Frequency (VHF) band, these sensors operate under all-weather conditions and have superior detection and false/nuisance alarm performance compared to other technologies. In addition, the technology has been independently evaluated as having the lowest available vulnerabilities to defeat. In 1995, Senstar Corporation announced, in a precursor to this paper, the development of a new generation of ported coaxial cable sensors. This new generation featured the availability of a novel leaky cable design that combines both transmit and receive elements in a single jacketed cable for ease of installation. A new concept for the sensor was also presented, that results in significant performance improvements, and offers a highly modular system architecture for ease of application. This paper reports on the next step in realizing this new generation of ported coaxial cable sensors, called Perimitrax. Included is an overview of the system architecture which has resulted from the detailed engineering design and a discussion of the major system design decisions that were made. A detailed description of each of the system building blocks is provided as is a number of examples of typical system configurations.