Objective
Q: Could you clarify "focus on improving the performance of aerial radar"?
A: Aerial radar data collection assists in fulfilling numerous defence and security applications.
We would like you to examine aerial data collected from existing radars and/or radar networks.
The challenge is not investigating modifying or replacing radar systems.
Q: Which radar systems, sensors and signal sources are the focus of this challenge?
A: The challenge concentrates on a land-based data processing sensor utilizing several signal sources from radar systems to identify airborne targets and is limited to detecting aircraft.
Solution areas
Q: Is the challenge limited to algorithms that "automatically convert aircraft plots (location) to tracks (vector)"?
A: This challenge area focuses on a tracker for aircraft targets; a solution that is capable of associating consecutive multi-land-based radar reports (plots) to track (vector) an aircraft target.
The solution should be algorithm based; however, it is not limited to algorithms.
Q: Concerning "provide confidence levels of their outputs", does this include algorithms that decrease the false detection rate of target aircraft?
A: Radar trackers associate consecutive radar observations of the same target into tracks and filter the noise from signal sources to avoid false alarms.
The confidence levels of the algorithms applied to radar trackers express the grade of mathematical "correctness" to detect positive targets.
In the context of the challenge; how likely is the calculated/estimated track position of a detected aircraft target – this should be expressed within a 95.0% - 99.5% confidence interval/region.
Q: Is being "capable of modification to operate on civilian or non-civilian radar data", related with sensor fusion, i.e. Military radar sensing data may be supplemented with Civilian radar data, e.g. Air Traffic Control (ATC) radars and Meteorological (MET) radars?
A: This challenge area concentrates on fusing multiple data sources from several radar systems signal sources.
Augmenting Military radar data with Civilian data increases the accuracy of radar trackers; therefore, if we add available civil data, we would like you to incorporate it into your solutions.
Evaluation and assessment of proposals
Q: What is the Technology Readiness Level (TRL) requirement for the proposed solution?
A: We have not set a TRL limit on the challenge solutions; however, solutions that are at TRL 5 and above are of interest.
Invitation to bid for a NCI Agency contract
Q: If invited to bid for a contract in this area, can you confirm the budget for such a project?
A: The contract value for such a project depends on the value we will derive based on NATO's operational requirements, and the bid cannot exceed the maximum value defined in the procurement rules for a limited competition.