Ultra-wideband synthetic aperture radar for mine field detection

Ground-penetrating radar (GPR) constitutes one of the oldest technologies for subsurface sensing. Most of such systems are placed in direct or near-direct contact with the earth surface. A significant drawback of this approach is the lack of "standoff", a particular problem for the detection of buried ordnance (e.g., mines). Moreover, it is time consuming to use such hand-held systems for large-area interrogation over variable terrain and foliage. The US Army Research Laboratory (ARL) has therefore undertaken the development of a synthetic aperture radar (SAR) system, with which significant standoff can be achieved. This system provides surveillance of large areas, the results from which can dictate the smaller regions over which conventional hand-held systems (e.g., electromagnetic induction, conventional GPR, and magnetometers) should be deployed. Therefore, while ideally we would like to use the SAR system to detect and distinguish each mine, we are particularly interested in mine field detection, over very large areas. Consequently, we need not detect each mine, but rather mine clusters. This simplified problem statement still constitutes a significant technological challenge, particularly in highly cluttered (natural and anthropic) environments.