Millimeter Wave Detection of Landmines

Millimeter wave absorption relative to background soil can be used for detection landmines with little or no metal content. At these frequencies, soil and landmine absorb electromagnetic energy differently. Stepped frequency measurements from 20 GHz to 60 GHz were used to detect buried surrogate landmines in the soil. The targets were 3 cm and 5 cm beneath the soil surface and coherent transmission and reflection was used in the experimental setup. The measurement set-up was mounted on a handheld portable device, and this device was on a rail for accurate displacement such that the rail could move freely along the scan axis. Measurements were performed with network analyzer and scattering data in frequency domain were recorded for processing, namely for inverse Fourier Transform and background subtraction. Background subtraction was performed through a numerical filter to achieve higher contrast ratio. Although the numerical filter used was a simple routine with minimal computational burden, a specific detection method was applied to the background subtracted GPR data, which was based on correlation summation of consecutive A-scan signals in a predefined window length.