UAV-based ground penetrating synthetic aperture radar

Abstract

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 4GHz 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.