Bistatic Landmine and IED Detection Combining Vehicle and Drone Mounted GPR Sensors

Maria Garcia-Fernandez,Carey Rappaport,Ann Morgenthaler,Fernando Las Heras,Yuri Alvarez-Lopez

doi:10.3390/rs11192299

Maria Garcia-Fernandez, Carey Rappaport + Show 3 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/rs11192299

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Journal: Remote Sensing	Publication Date: Oct 2, 2019
Citations: 15	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: Northeastern University, University of Oviedo

Abstract

This work proposes a novel Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) system to detect landmines and Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs). The system, which was numerically evaluated, is composed of a transmitter placed on a vehicle and looking forward and a receiver mounted on a drone and looking downwards. This combination offers both a good penetration and a high resolution, enabling the detection of non-metallic targets and mitigating the clutter at the air–soil interface. First, a fast ray tracing simulator was developed to find proper configurations of the system. Then, these configurations were validated using a full wave simulator, considering a flat and a rough surface. All simulations were post-processed using a fast and accurate Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) algorithm that takes into account the constitutive parameters of the soil. The SAR images for all configurations were compared, concluding that the proposed contribution greatly improves the target detection and the surface clutter reduction over conventional forward-looking GPR systems.

Highlights

The non-invasive detection of hidden or buried objects has attracted an increasing interest due to its practical applicability in several fields such as civil engineering, security and defense, and archeology, among others [1]
The scenario simulated with these methods consists of a low moisture sandy soil where a target of 2 cm radius is buried at 25 cm depth
Simulations are performed between 3.5 and 5.5 GHz at 10 MHz steps considering TE polarization. These frequencies are higher than those commonly used in Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR), they have been chosen so that the radar could be light enough to be mounted on board a Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV)

Summary

Introduction

The non-invasive detection of hidden or buried objects has attracted an increasing interest due to its practical applicability in several fields such as civil engineering (structural and road inspection), security and defense (landmine detection), and archeology, among others [1] These techniques are able to detect the concealed objects without physically interacting with them or the surrounding medium. Electromagnetic induction, thermal imaging, nuclear quadrupole resonance or Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) are some well-known examples of non-invasive techniques Among these techniques, GPR has been widely used for subsurface imaging applications [2]. One of its main advantages is that it can detect both metallic and dielectric targets This technique is quite sensitive to the soil heterogeneity, the soil surface roughness and the possible low contrast between the soil and a non-metallic target [3]. It requires careful configuration and advanced signal processing techniques to overcome these issues and improve the detectability of the system

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