HD eye in the sky test proves to be successful


An HD-equipped UAV, the work of Flying-Cam and Global Microwave Systems, made its maiden flight in Carlsbad, CA, last month.

Global Microwave Systems last month completed a successful unmanned aerial vehicle, UAV, flight demonstration of a high-definition video wireless link.

The demonstration flight at the GMS facilities in Carlsbad, CA, in partnership with Flying-Cam of Belgium, used a GMS High-Definition Messenger Link, HDML, mounted on a Flying-Cam UAV platform. This is the first known successful flight demonstration of an HD link on a UAV platform and paves the way for real-time HD long-range aerial acquisition for television applications, such as ENG and sports, and movie production. It also opens up operational deployment of HD UAV platforms in critical surveillance and covert applications requiring high-resolution images.

GMS’ HDML includes the High-Definition Messenger Transmitter (HDMT), the 6-antenna diversity Messenger Smart Receiver (MSR), the optional Messenger Antennas Array (MAA) for long distance coverage and an HD MPEG-2 decoder. All versions of the HDML family use COFDM and powerful forward error correction algorithms.

A video of the flight can be streamed from http://movieserver.gmsinc.com/GMS_HD_UAV_WM9.htm.