Essex Receives $250,000 Radar Workbench Add-On

COLUMBIA, Md., July 15 -- Essex Corp., a developer of signal processing algorithms and optoelectronic processors for military applications, has received a one-year, $250,000 contract modification from the US Department of Defense Naval Air Warfare Center to enhance the Essex proprietary Radar Workbench with software algorithms that will analyze moving targets. The contract continues research procured under the Small Business Innovative Research program.

The Radar Workbench is a synthetic aperture radar (SAR) image processing system being evaluated by the Navy for airborne deployment. The system is based on the Essex ImSyn optoelectronic processor and 2-D and 3-D image processing algorithms. ImSyn is a patented image-processing system that combines lasers and high-speed electronics.

Essex will compare performance of Radar Workbench to other tactical radar image processing systems. The company said SAR has become the bedrock of military imaging because it can penetrate clouds, foliage and the ground.