Abstract
An improved Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) system on board an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) is presented in this contribution. The system has been designed for the detection and imaging of buried targets and, in particular, landmines and Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs). Resting on the hardware and architecture of a previous aerial platform, in the proposed system the scanning area is increased and the detection capabilities are improved. These improvements are achieved by employing two receiving antennas and new processing techniques that increase the Signal-to-Clutter Ratio of the GPR images. Besides, parameters affecting the GPR image resolution, such as the flight speed and the amount of measurements that can be processed together using Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) techniques, are also studied. The developed system exhibits several advantages: safety and faster scanning speeds, together with the capability to detect both metallic and non-metallic targets, as shown in the examples presented in this contribution.
Highlights
Non-Destructive Testing (NDT) techniques have been of great interest in a wide scope of applications, from mining and geology, to civil engineering and civil works, archaeology, and security and defense, among others
DESCRIPTION OF THE SCENARIO The improved Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV)-based Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) system for Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) and landmine detection has been validated at the airfield for UAVs of the Technical School of Engineering of Gijón, located at coordinates (43.522, −5.624)
Concerning the time required for the preparation of the prototype, thanks to the use of a dual-band Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS)-real time kinematic (RTK) receiver, maximum positioning accuracy is achieved within seconds after powering the UAV up
Summary
Non-Destructive Testing (NDT) techniques have been of great interest in a wide scope of applications, from mining and geology, to civil engineering and civil works, archaeology, and security and defense, among others. B. AIM AND SCOPE OF THIS CONTRIBUTION Results presented in [32] and [26] prove the feasibility to detect buried targets using UAV-based GPR systems (DLGPR and side-looking GPR architectures, respectively), introducing SAR processing to achieve cm-level resolution. The frequency bands of these systems provide a good trade-off between image resolution and penetration depth In this contribution, the system presented in [32] is improved aiming to achieve better detection capabilities and to increase the scanning area. Concerning radar data processing, the basic preprocessing comprises: first, retrieving the impulse response; performing time-gating to select the range of interest; and, applying average subtraction and height correction to mitigate the clutter
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