Patent ID: 8340345

Claim:
An antifratricide system comprising: an emitter that emits a signaling code at a wavelength, the signaling code representing a coded message; a receiver that captures an image of a field of view including the emitter and generates image information corresponding to the captured image; a translation system comprising: a look-up database including signaling code translation values and corresponding alphanumeric characters; a processor coupled to the look-up database; and a decoder module operated by the processor, the decoder module receiving the image information, detecting the signaling code in the image information, and decoding the coded message from the image information, wherein decoding the coded message includes: comparing the detected signaling code to the signaling code translation values in the look-up database, determining whether the detected signaling code matches one or more of the signaling code translation values to generate a code match, determining the alphanumeric character associated with the code match to decode the coded message, and storing the decoded message; and an output device that outputs the decoded message to a user, wherein the translation system analyzes the image information to determine the wavelength of electromagnetic energy generated by the emitter, and wherein the decoder module decodes the coded message only if the determined wavelength corresponds to a predetermined wavelength.