KELVIN HUGHES Launches Innovative Marine Navigation Equipment

Published Oct 12, 2006 12:01 AM by The Maritime Executive

At this year’s SMM exhibition in Hamburg, Kelvin Hughes launches SharpEye™, the most revolutionary innovation in the marine navigation market since the introduction of commercial radar in the 1940s.

For 60 years radar has had to use short high power pulses of microwave energy to detect contacts on the sea surface. SharpEyeTM changes all that. With patented SharpEyeTM technology, Kelvin Hughes has eliminated the magnetron and high voltage modulator from its latest series of radar transceivers and taken detection performance and reliability to a new level unrivalled by the competition.

A radical approach within the transceiver enables more information to be extracted from the radar returns before processing by the display, allowing detection techniques, which are normally only found in multi-million dollar military systems, to be available in commercial marine radars.

The new S-Band SharpEyeTM system will detect targets in clutter long before conventional radar. It achieves this major performance advantage through the use of a monostatic pulse Doppler solid state transceiver that uses the Doppler effect to determine the target’s velocities. It features advanced pulse compression which processes received echoes into velocity bands enabling it to separate the wanted targets from clutter.

With no lifed items requiring periodic replacement, SharpEyeTM is a truly 'fit and forget' technology, reliability is maximized, maintenance is minimised and performance is enhanced to a new level. SharpEyeTM can be fitted to existing Kelvin Hughes Nucleus 3 and Manta systems.

In the SharpEyeTM radar the solid state power amplifier has a peak output power of just 170W, this contrasts with typical marine radar systems in which the magnetron has a 30kW peak output. But SharpEyeTM produces more energy than the magnetron system therefore exceeding conventional radar in detection performance.

SharpEyeTM continuously measures key performance parameters such as RF output power, VSWR, oscillator frequencies and receiver sensitivity and informs the operator that the radar is operating within its performance envelope. The system automatically alarms if there is any degradation in radar performance and removes the need for the periodic performance checks.

“This revolutionary new system from Kelvin Hughes is a major leap forward for the marine navigation industry”, said Ron Nailer, managing director of Kelvin Hughes. “We are so confident of the reliability of this new technology that we are offering a lifetime guarantee in support of SharpEyeTM technology.”