The objective of the Advanced Mine Detection Radar Program is to demonstrate the capability of the vehicular-mounted, frequency agile radar to detect, identify and locate metallic and nonmetallic, buried and surface land mines at a stand-off distance of about 10 meters (m). This wideband, operating frequency system consists of one transmit and two receive horns, transmit and receive circuitries, an IBM-compatible computer (PC), and a Sun computer. The transmit horn generates a train of pulsed continuous-wave (CW) signals in 36 stepped operating frequencies. These frequencies are used to resonate all nonmetallic and metallic mines. At each cycle of these pulses, while the signal of the transmit horn is off, the receive horns receive the echo, the signal of soil, roots, rocks, and targets. This echo is then mixed with the two I/Q circuits to produce the in-phase and quadrature-phase signals. These signals are then low-pass filtered, amplified, and digitized signals while the PC is acquiring a new data set at the next operating frequency. At each frequency, the system noise and the clutter of the digitized signals will be reduced by the averaging and smoothing algorithms. After all 36 frequencies have been transmitted and the data preprocessed, an anomaly will be detected, located and identifies by the data processing algorithms. The results from the final field test of this program shows a 100 percent detection with an average of 36 percent identification and 17 false alarms per 78 m² in a condition of nearly 5 percent of the moisture content in the soil.

Date Published: 20 June 1995
PDF: 6 pages
Proc. SPIE 2496, Detection Technologies for Mines and Minelike Targets, (20 June 1995); doi: 10.1117/12.211371

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 2496:
Detection Technologies for Mines and Minelike Targets
Abinash C. Dubey; Ivan Cindrich; James M. Ralston; Kelly A. Rigano, Editor(s)