iwildfire® system is an Automatic Fast Forest Fire Detection System that the iintegra group has developed to be used in forest with communications with a Control Centre. The system has a range above 5 km and can cover an area larger than 8.000 hectares in some three minutes, which is an acceptable coverage for small forests where fire protection is needed.
iwildfire® is based on the technology called Optical Pseudo-random Signal Extraction and Noise Elimination (OPSENE), or with the more intuitive name of NeoLIDAR, as it shows similarities with LIDAR. iwildfire® sends out the so-called Pseudo-Random Modulated Beam (PRMB) above the skyline drawn by the trees, mountains, unevenness of the terrain... This PRMB is normally lost to infinity and nothing returns to the system. If a smoke plume appears over the horizon, the PRMB impacts against it and the scattering phenomena takes place. Thus a fraction of PRMB is scattered at 180 degrees (backscattering), and returns to the system where it is detected. The software analysies the tiny fraction of PRMB received, in order to evaluate whether it corresponds to a false alarm. In case of positive identification an alarm warning is sent to the Control Centre, together with a picture of the smoke plume, so that an operator can assess the seriousness of the alarm and decide upon the appropriate course of action.
iwildfire® can be used to detect very fast the smoke coming from just-started forest fires.