Airport Business - 17

SECURITY

The eAIT
technology can
host up to four image
resolution stations to
maintain high volume
passenger flow

Investment in
New Technologies
Supports New Checkpoint Designs
Over the past several years, as passenger
wait-times have swelled, airports, air
carriers and travelers have been saddled
with long wait-times and the costs
associated with missed f lights and
disrupted operations. Current operations
are strained and without space to add
additional lanes and increase security
screening capacity, options to remedy
the situation are further limited by the
space required for, and performance
challenges of, currently fielded security
technology. High false alarm rates and
the time-consuming alarm resolution
procedures and re-screening process
can bring security checkpoints and
queues to a halt. To resolve alarms, TSA's
workforce and passengers must endure
invasive pat-down procedures that
further reduce checkpoint throughput.
While TSA recently announced its
procurement of higher performance
scanners to screen passengers' carry-on
belongings that may make one part of
security easier and faster, the screening
of people for person-borne threats will
continue to be a chokepoint, due to
current AIT technology's performance
challenges and associated layout and
space requirements as dictated by the
Design Guide. As new high performance
AIT technology becomes available to
U.S. airports that supports both higher
detection, better throughput and takes up
less space, airports can finally transform
security checkpoints with design options
and efficiencies never before possible.

ROHDE & SCHWARZ

Designed for
Speed and Throughput
How are new AIT's different and how do
they help airports extend their expansion
and modernization investments to
include TSA's checkpoints and improved
security screening for travelers?
Fully electronic, new enhanced AIT
(eAIT) technology has no moving parts.
Instead, the system consists of two f lat
panels that provide an open scanner in
place of the confining chamber of legacy
technology into which passengers must
enter to be screened. Each flat panel of
the new eAIT is integrated with over
3,000 transmitter and 3,000 receivers.
Each transmitter is sequenced one at a
time as the 3,000 coherent receivers pull
signals from the noise and bounced off
the screened person's skin to yield a 3-D
map of all ref lection points and reveal
any anomalies. When the Automatic
Threat Resolution (ATR) process
detects an anomaly, it is then mapped
to an avatar and presented to the operator
for resolution.
Speed: The throughput of a
millimeter wave security scanner is not
just a function of scan time, but must
also include the processing time for
its ATR process, false alarm rate and
resulting secondary alarm resolution
procedures. While currently deployed
AIT systems can complete the scan
process in approximately six to eight

seconds, promising newer technology,
such as the new eAIT, are demonstrating
up to a three times improvement in scan
time while also significantly reducing
false alarms.
False Alarm Reduction: A lower
false alarm rate achieved by the eAIT
is enabled by, not only a more advanced
scanning technology, but also by the
speed of the scan. The scan time of a
passenger using an eAIT is reduced
from approximately 1.5 seconds to 64
milliseconds, more than five times faster
than the blink of an eye. As a result,
while both may seem fast, errors can be
caused by passenger movement during
the scan process of legacy AIT systems
while the millisecond scan time of eAIT
systems virtually eliminates such errors.
High volume screening by design:
When alarms do occur, alarm resolution
or secondary screening protocols must be
followed to resolve the detected anomaly
alarm. During these alarm resolution
procedures, screening halts and
passengers have to wait to be screened.
Current AIT's have a single screen for
the operator to see the ATR results,
presented on an avatar and to guide
the location of the anomaly to resolve
the alarm. Newer eAIT technology,
however, utilizes multiple image
resolution stations that can be used to
resolve passengers' alarms and allow for
continuous screening of other passengers.
Utilizing up to four resolution stations,

MAY 2019 \ AVIATIONPROS.COM / 17
http://www.AVIATIONPROS.COM
Airport Business

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Airport Business
