PMMW data collection results

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Coastal Systems Station under the sponsorship of the Marine Corps Amphibious Warfare Technology Directorate are exploring the use of a Passive Millimeter Wave (PMMW) sensor for stand off airborne mine detection. In the development of any new technology application, there exist a critical need to develop a balanced modeling and measurement capability. Both will complement one another. Nichols Research has established a physics-based image modeling capability for Passive Millimeter Wave (PMMW) systems. This modeling capability has been used to estimate the performance of a PMMW mine detection system. But, in order to accurately predict the performance of a PMMW imaging system, the background clutter characteristics must be characterized and the modeling results verified against measured data. In fact, in the case of a well designed sensor, the background clutter will define the systems overall performance making accurate knowledge of the clutter statistical variations critical. However currently, there is a lack of high resolution PMMW imagery of backgrounds, due to a lack of data collection instrumentation. This paper will present the results from a preliminary PMMW data collection to provide data for the assessment of a PMMW mine detection system. The data collection results will characterize both surface and buried mine detection capabilities under a variety of conditions. It is a well-established fact that no single sensor will be capable of solving the mine detection problem. Instead, a suite of complementary sensors is required. There is however a lack of an extensive data set of sensor modalities collected in a single sample area. Therefore as a secondary objective of this data collection, several sensor modalities will be used to simultaneously collect mine and minefield data. These results will also be presented.