A novel approach for anti-personnel landmine detection using an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) in combination with a ground penetrating synthetic aperture radar (GPSAR) is presented. The objective of the system is to accelerate the process of land release in humanitarian demining. Suspicious objects shall be detected by the radar and marked for further investigations using different sensor principles. The ground penetrating radar (GPR) module consists of a 1 GHz to 4 GHz side-looking frequency modulated continuous wave (FMCW) radar, a radar and lidar altimeter, and a real time kinematic global navigation satellite system (RTK GNSS). The image processing is done offline using a back-projection algorithm. In the theoretical part of this paper the system partitioning, the sensor module, and the position accuracy requirements are briefly described. In the experimental part of this paper synthetic aperture radar (SAR) measurements are presented.

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Anti-personnel fragmentation mines are relatively large metallic mines, which are only partially buried and often triggered by a metallic tripwire. In humanitarian mine clearance, the search for the wires is usually carried out manually. As a new approach, an airborne system for the detection of tripwires using a synthetic aperture radar is presented. The system consists of an industrial multicopter, a frequency-modulated continuouswave radar, and a real time kinematic global navigation satellite system. For image formation, a back-projection algorithm is used. Measurements with tripwires attached to a dummy mine successfully demonstrate the functionality of this system approach. In addition, the influence of wire length, vegetation, and incidence angle are investigated. It is shown that several overflights with different directions of flight are required to detect randomly oriented tripwires.

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Humanitarian demining is still mainly carried out by hand. The most trusted and widely used technical tool is probably the metal detector. However, these sensors are hand-held devices which are operated closely to the surface. To make the process of mine clearance safer, a ground penetrating synthetic aperture radar (GPSAR) was developed that can be operated on an autonomous flying unmanned aerial system (UAS). A key challenge of this system approach is the accurate position acquisition of the UAS. This paper compares a real time kinematic global navigation satellite system (RTK GNSS) and a total station with respect to UAS-based synthetic aperture radar (SAR) image processing. First, the systems and the associated signal processing chain will be briefly presented, then the trajectories and the processed SAR image will be compared.