Man portable mine detector using nuclear quadrupole resonance-first year progress and test results

We report the results of the first year of a three-year program to develop an NQR-based landmine detection system. An extensive 35 hour series of blind tests was carried out on a new man portable sensor head for detecting RDX. The system achieved a 90% probability of detection with a corresponding 10% false alarm rate multiple times during the different test scenarios. In a smaller set of 1000 blind runs on 60 g and 2.5 kg targets under the same conditions the system repeatedly achieved 100% probability of detection at close to 0% false alarms. In addition, we report the results of a new effort to improve the detection of TNT by NQR. At the end of the first year the system sensitivity is such that scaled to the single sided coil used for RDX, the performance is 225 g of TNT with a 98.5% probability of detection with a corresponding 10% false alarm rate.