Automated aerial surveillance and detection of hostile ground events, and the tracking of the perpetrators have become of critical importance in the prevention and control of insurgent uprisings and the global war on terror. Yet a basic understanding of the limitations of sensor system coverage as a function of aerial platform position and attitude is often unavailable to program managers and system administrators. In an effort to better understand this problem we present some of the design tradeoffs for two applications: 1) a 360° viewing focal-plane array sensor system modeled for low altitude aerostat applications, and 2) a fixed diameter area of constant surveillance modeled for high altitude fixed wing aircraft applications. Ground coverage requirement tradeoffs include the number of sensors, sensor footprint geometry, footprint coverage variability as a function of platform position and attitude, and ground surface modeling. Event location specification includes latitude, longitude, altitude for the pixel centroid and corners, and line-of-sight centroid range.
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