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Dayford Designs, a leading UK PCB design services company, has recently completed a series of PCB’s for the QinetiQ Cerberus 360 Swimmer Detection System. The project included a 12 layer, high-speed data communications PCB, a 12 layer ADC PCB using microvia technology, a flexible PCB, a power amplifier PCB and a power converter PCB.
QinetiQ is one of the world's leading defence technology and security companies. Its Cerberus system provides an effective, rapid response to the problem of protecting a harbour, ship or vulnerable asset from the threat of attack, on or beneath the surface, by terrorists, insurgents or hostile forces. In today's world the challenges faced by governments to detect, identify and respond to both defence and homeland security threats requires the most advanced technical capabilities science can offer.
Commenting on the high specification assembly, Andy Webb, Chief Engineer at QinetiQ for the Cerberus project said, “We needed a reliable and trustworthy partner for our first commercial venture and had no hesitation in continuing to work with our long term supplier Dayford Design in outsourcing the PCB design functions. The project involved a number of PCBs ranging from complex microvia technology to power supplies, all required in short timescales and Dayford had the necessary experience and capacity to support us.”
“We have been providing PCB services to QinetiQ since 2001 and for many years to the company’s predecessors, the MOD Defence research labs, DERA, DRA and RSRE. The PCBs for this project were demanding but we met all stringent design criteria, on schedule and to budget,” said Dayford managing director, Jim Hurford.
The Cerberus 360 swimmer detection system offers cost-effective automated detection, classification and tracking at long range. Cerberus uses wideband sonar technologies to detect intrusion by swimmers using snorkel, scuba or re-breather as well as swimmer delivery vehicles and provides the early detection, classification, tracking and warning of threat targets over a 1.6 km protection circle. Shallow coastal waters and harbours are a challenging environment for sonar due to their depth, seabed topography and variable sound profiles. Unlike Cerberus, other solutions encounter many problems such as reverberation and multiple path reflections resulting in poor range performance.
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