Advances in ported coaxial cable technology

Ported coaxial cable technology was first developed in the mid-1970's in response to a growing need for high performance covert sensors for perimeter intrusion detection. Technology development over the years has lead to a number of different sensor products that have seen wide-spread application. The original ported coaxial cable sensors went through several generations of improvements-primarily in response to experience gained from thousands of installations worldwide. These early generations were essentially refinements to the original products, intended to incrementally improve detection and invalid alarm performance and also to increase reliability. For perspective, this paper provides a very brief historical review of the ported coaxial cable sensors that have been commercialized to date and introduces two new and innovative sensor configurations that have recently emerged from research and development programs at Senstar Corporation. The first is a new "single-cable" networked sensor introduced to the market as S/spl infin/Trax which significantly reduces installation costs and complexity by eliminating the need for a second buried cable-while retaining the detection zone characteristics and performance established by the original sensors. The second is a "totally covert" configuration that takes advantage of recent advances in semiconductor technology to further simplify installation and also offers a growth path for joint domain and multiple sensor integration.