Synthetic Aperture Radar Imaging System for Landmine Detection Using a Ground Penetrating Radar on Board a Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

García-Fernández, María; Álvarez-López, Yuri; Arboleya, Ana; González-Valdés, Borja; Vaqueiro, Yolanda Rodríguez; Las-Heras, Fernando; García, Antonio Pino

doi:10.1109/access.2018.2863572

Cited by 142 publications

(100 citation statements)

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“…In the last years, there has been a massive development of new applications using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) [1][2][3][4]. A considerable amount of these applications is based on integrating electromagnetic sensors on board the UAVs (e.g., power detectors for antenna measurement [5], or radars for earth observation [6] and subsurface sensing [7]). Safety, measurement speed and the ability to fly over difficult-to-access areas are some of the advantages that have contributed to widely increase the usage of UAVs for security and defense applications, such as landmine and Improvised Explosive Device (IED) detection.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As aforementioned, in landmine and IED detection, the scanning system must be placed at a safe stand-off distance to prevent accidental detonations, thus FLGPR architectures have been usually proposed due to the difficulties to keep a safe distance with a DLGPR system. However, in the last years, a new approach based on a UAV-mounted radar has been proposed [7,15], allowing the use of a DLGPR configuration in safe conditions.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Autonomous Airborne 3D SAR Imaging System for Subsurface Sensing: UWB-GPR on Board a UAV for Landmine and IED Detection

2019

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This work presents an enhanced autonomous airborne Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imaging system able to provide full 3D radar images from the subsurface. The proposed prototype and methodology allow the safe detection of both metallic and non-metallic buried targets even in difficult-to-access scenarios without interacting with the ground. Thus, they are particularly suitable for detecting dangerous targets, such as landmines and Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs). The prototype is mainly composed by an Ultra-Wide-Band (UWB) radar module working from Ultra-High-Frequency (UHF) band and a high accuracy dual-band Real Time Kinematic (RTK) positioning system mounted on board an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV). The UAV autonomously flies over the region of interest, gathering radar measurements. These measurements are accurately geo-referred so as to enable their coherent combination to obtain a well-focused SAR image. Improvements in the processing chain are also presented in order to deal with some issues associated to UAV-based measurements (such as non-uniform acquisition grids) as well as to enhance the resolution and the signal to clutter ratio of the image. Both the prototype and the methodology were validated with measurements, showing their capability to provide high-resolution 3D SAR images.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Autonomous Airborne 3D SAR Imaging System for Subsurface Sensing: UWB-GPR on Board a UAV for Landmine and IED Detection

2019

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“…The SDRs can provide a quick confirmation for the proof of concept, but, in many cases, it has a disadvantage in efficiency and mobility. To overcome this, several works have applied commercial equipment or custom-developed GPR systems for efficient buried object detection with GPR and UAV combination [12][13][14]. However, since UAVs are battery-powered devices, the main contributions of this paper are: (i) Decreasing the weight and power consumption of the complete radar system, with the purpose to extend the flight time, or allow use of a smaller UAV platform; (ii) Improved Radio Frequency (RF) front-end sensitivity of the proposed transceiver, which enables a decrease of the RF transmitting power and power consumption.…”

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A Lightweight and Low-Power UAV-Borne Ground Penetrating Radar Design for Landmine Detection

Šipoš

Gleich

2020

Sensors

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This paper presents the development of a lightweight and low-power Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) to detect buried landmines in harsh terrain, using an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV). Despite the fact that GPR airborne systems have been already used for a while, there has yet been no focus on the UAV autonomy, which depends on the payload itself. Therefore, the contribution of this work is the introduction of a lightweight and low-power consumption GPR system, which is based on the Stepped Frequency Continuous Wave (SFCW) radar principle. The Radio Frequency (RF) transceiver represents an improved implementation of the super-heterodyne architecture, which currently offers higher sensitivity. This is achieved by combining analog and digital processing techniques. The experimental results showed that the developed system can detect both metallic and plastic buried targets. Target detection with a scanning height up to about 0.5 m shows good applicability in an unstructured, harsh environment, which is typical of mined terrain. The proposed system still needs some improvements for a fully operational system regarding different aspects of scanning speeds and soil properties such as moisture content.Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) [3]. Results have revealed that great success was achieved in landmine detection with the use of GPR. Moreover, it currently shows most potential among other technologies [4], where the main benefit is the ability to detect metal and plastic landmines down to the smallest size. The most common systems which use GPR are hand-held devices [5], ground vehicles [6] and, recently, also Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) [7]; or even a combination of them [8]. The GPR detection principle is straight forward. It is based on transmitting and receiving electromagnetic (EM) waves using antennas. EM waves reflect from metal, or transition between different dielectric materials (as is the case between soil and the landmine explosive, which is considered as the target). If a backscattered signal is received by the receiving antenna and the amplitude of the bounced signal is above the receivers noise floor, this change can be detected.As stated, UAV GPR systems already exist and they are gaining in popularity. The technology of UAVs has been developing rapidly. With data fusion of different sensors, they form a robust and smart flying platform, which operates autonomously on pre-defined tracks and avoids potential obstacles. By including the latest geo-location technology such as Real-Time Kinematic (RTK) GPS systems, localization is improved to centimeter-level accuracy [9]. Different GPR systems have been introduced on UAVs for landmine detection. The improvement in Software Defined Radios (SDR) has shown that, besides the major use in communications, high bandwidth boards also open the possibility of short-range radar implementation for UAV use [10,11]. The SDRs can provide a quick confirmation for the proof of concept, but, in many cases, it has a disadvantage in efficiency and mobility. To overcome this, ...

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“…In this frame, the first experimentation concerning interferometric P and X band SAR systems onboard UAV platforms has been reported in [12], while a UAV polarimetric SAR imaging system has been proposed in [13]. UAVs have been also exploited in the field of landmine detection as platforms equipped with Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) systems [14,15].Despite these promising examples, the development of radar systems onboard M-UAV is at an early stage and M-UAV radar imaging still represents a scientific challenge, especially when small and light M-UAV platforms are deployed. Indeed, the full exploitation of smart and flexible M-UAV imaging radar systems requires the development of reconstruction approaches able to deal with non-conventional data acquisition configurations, where data are not collected along a straight linear trajectory due to environmental conditions or presence of obstacles.…”

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Small Multicopter-UAV-Based Radar Imaging: Performance Assessment for a Single Flight Track

et al. 2020

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This paper deals with a feasibility study assessing the reconstruction capabilities of a small Multicopter-Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (M-UAV) based radar system, whose flight positions are determined by using the Carrier-Phase Differential GPS (CDGPS) technique. The paper describes the overall radar imaging system in terms of both hardware devices and data processing strategy for the case of a single flight track. The data processing is cast as the solution of an inverse scattering problem and is able to provide focused images of on surface targets. In particular, the reconstruction is approached through the adjoint of the functional operator linking the unknown contrast function to the scattered field data, which is computed by taking into account the actual flight positions provided by the CDGPS technique. For this inverse problem, we provide an analysis of the reconstruction capabilities by showing the effect of the radar parameters, the flight altitude and the spatial offset between target and flight path on the resolution limits. A measurement campaign is carried out to demonstrate the imaging capabilities in controlled conditions. Experimental results referred to two surveys performed on the same scene but at two different UAV altitudes verify the consistency of these results with the theoretical resolution analysis.Remote Sens. 2020, 12, 774 2 of 22 UAV-based radar imaging receives huge attention in several military and civilian applications, such as surveillance, security, diagnostics, monitoring in civil engineering, cultural heritage and earth observation, with particular emphasis on natural disasters, which should be safely and timely monitored [8]. At the state-of-the-art, radar imaging performed by M-UAVs has been proposed for precision farming [9], forest mapping [10] and glaciology [11]. In addition, M-UAVs have been exploited to perform Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), avoiding large platforms when monitoring small areas. In this frame, the first experimentation concerning interferometric P and X band SAR systems onboard UAV platforms has been reported in [12], while a UAV polarimetric SAR imaging system has been proposed in [13]. UAVs have been also exploited in the field of landmine detection as platforms equipped with Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) systems [14,15].Despite these promising examples, the development of radar systems onboard M-UAV is at an early stage and M-UAV radar imaging still represents a scientific challenge, especially when small and light M-UAV platforms are deployed. Indeed, the full exploitation of smart and flexible M-UAV imaging radar systems requires the development of reconstruction approaches able to deal with non-conventional data acquisition configurations, where data are not collected along a straight linear trajectory due to environmental conditions or presence of obstacles. In this respect, it is worth pointing out that radar imaging, i.e., the possibility to obtain a focused image of the investigated region, strongly depends on the accurate knowledge of platform po...

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Synthetic Aperture Radar Imaging System for Landmine Detection Using a Ground Penetrating Radar on Board a Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

Cited by 142 publications

References 34 publications

Autonomous Airborne 3D SAR Imaging System for Subsurface Sensing: UWB-GPR on Board a UAV for Landmine and IED Detection

Autonomous Airborne 3D SAR Imaging System for Subsurface Sensing: UWB-GPR on Board a UAV for Landmine and IED Detection

A Lightweight and Low-Power UAV-Borne Ground Penetrating Radar Design for Landmine Detection

Small Multicopter-UAV-Based Radar Imaging: Performance Assessment for a Single Flight Track

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