A breakthrough in passive radar technology that transforms existing commercial broadcast infrastructure into a distributed sensor network—detecting what conventional systems cannot see.
Vision-guided drones emit nothing. They navigate by camera and inertial systems, generating zero radio frequency signatures. Conventional RF detection cannot find them. Electronic jamming cannot stop them. They are invisible to legacy defense systems.
Autonomous drones using vision-based navigation produce no detectable radio emissions. RF detection systems have nothing to find.
Conventional radar systems reveal their position with every transmission. This creates tactical vulnerability and enables adversarial countermeasures.
Existing passive radar processors consume 100–500 watts. Distributed sensor networks are impossible when a single node drains batteries in under an hour.
Every FM radio tower, television transmitter, and cellular base station floods the electromagnetic environment with energy. When that energy strikes an aircraft, some reflects. Vortex captures and processes those reflections to detect and track targets—without emitting a single watt.
Each frequency band offers different characteristics. A target that produces weak returns in one band may scatter strongly in another. Fusing across bands improves detection confidence and suppresses false alarms.
Vortex combines three specialized processing stages—each optimized for its computational character. FPGA correlation preserves phase coherence for precision ranging. Neuromorphic classification handles sparse, intermittent micro-Doppler patterns. Graph neural network fusion associates detections across heterogeneous sensor geometries.
The result: under one watt for all signal processing, while maintaining detection performance that rivals systems consuming hundreds of watts. This power envelope enables distributed sensor networks that were previously impossible.
An adversary cannot detect, localize, jam, or target what doesn't emit. Against autonomous drones that themselves emit nothing, this creates a sensor-target geometry where neither party reveals itself.
Under 6 watts enables battery-powered operation for 30+ hours. Deploy networks of 10–50 nodes covering wide areas, each operating unattended without revealing its presence.
A target that produces weak returns in one band may scatter strongly in another. Fusing across four bands simultaneously achieves detection confidence impossible with single-band systems.
Time from first detection to track output is 200–400 ms. Fast enough for integration with short-range air defense fire control systems for autonomous engagement.