DELFT UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY

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• DELFT UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY
• Delft The Netherlands
• Faculty of Electrical Engineering

A SAFE WAY TO DETECT LANDMINES
Simone Placidi 1244930 MSc Telecommunication S.P
lacidi_at_ewi.tudelft.nl
Observation Technology ET 4020 Thursday 09
December 2004
A safe way to detect landmines
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Outline

• Background of the Landmines Problem
• Plastic Antipersonnel Landmines
• New technologies Ground Penetrating Radar
• The Clutter Problem
• The best solution Multisensors system

Simone Placidi 1244930
A safe way to detect landmines
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Background

• The global landmines crisis is one of the most
  pervasive problems
• Landmines crisis is creating social and economic
  problems worldwide
• They kill or maim everyone stepping on them.
  About 26000 people every year
• They cost 3 10 to be produced and 300
  1000 to be destroyed
• The global Mine clearance is a very
  time-consuming, dangerous and complex task
• Nobody knows exactly how many mines are in the
  ground

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Countries Affected By Landmines
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Problem

• Landmines are divided into Antitank and
  Antipersonnel ones.
• There are more than 350 known types of mines
• They are made from wood, metal, compressed
  explosive, plastic, glass
• They have different shapes, colour, size,
  detonation method and impact range
• They can laid in a different environments
  (roads, fields, forest, desert, town)

• Nowadays the most important problem is
• Newer mines are made from plastic.
• They have no-metal or low-metal content.
• They can easily elude many electromagnetic
  conductivity based sensors.

Simone Placidi 1244930
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AP - Landmines
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How To Detect Them

• Different methods to detect AP landmines
• Probing the ground
• Trained dogs
• Metal Detectors (MD)
• Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR)
• Sensors ( gas, magnetic, electro-optical,
  acoustic)
• Infrared ( IR )
• Nuclear Quadrupole Resonance ( NQR )
• Thermal Neutron Activation ( TNA )
• Mine clearing Machines

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New Technologies - GPR

• Ground Penetrating Radar is one of the best new
  technologies to detect
• shallow mines.
• GPR depends more on the relative dielectric
  properties of the landmine-soil
• environment and less on the electrical
  conductivity of the landmine
• GPR utilizes the contrast in dielectric constant
  between the object that is to be
• detected and the material the radar wave
  passes through.
• It can provides a 3-D image of the subsurface,
  colour, depth, size of the
• shallow buried mine.

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How GPR Works

• The em wave is radiated from a
• transmitting antenna
• The wave travels through the ground
• at a velocity determined primarily by
• the permittivity of the material.
• When the wave hits an object with
• different electrical properties from the
• surrounding medium, it is scattered
• The receiving antenna detect the
• scattered wave.
• The data are recorded on a digital
• storage device for later interpretation.

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The Clutter Problem

• Those signals are unrelated to the target
  scattering characteristics but
• occupy the same frequency band as the targets.
• The signals have almost the same spectral
  properties and arrive almost at
• the same time. They are very difficult to
  discriminate.
• Clutter is caused by multiple reflections
• - in the antennas,
• - between the antenna and the ground
• - from non-mine target buried in the ground
• - from subsurface inhomogeneities (rock, roots,
  small metal pieces)
• The weak signal from the target will be
  obscured by the much stronger
• signal from the surface.

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GPR Advantages Disadv.

• Advantages
• - Measurements are relatively easy to
  make, rapid and not intrusive.
• - High resolution
• - Near real time interpretation
• - A lot of details describing the buried
  object
• Disadvantages
• - Clutter problem
• - Site specific applications
• - Shallow depth of observation

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Solution

• The best solution to
• increase the safety
• increase the speed of demining
• increase the probability to find different types
  of mines
• reduce the false alarm rate
• operate in a wide range of environments
• is a
• MULTISENSORS SYSTEM
• Combination of different truly orthogonal sensors

Simone Placidi 1244930
A safe way to detect landmines
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MULTISENSORS SYSTEM

• Metal Detector ( MD )
• - it reports anomalies in the electrical
  conductivity to detect very small
• amounts of metal.
• Infrared Image ( IR )
• - it provides a measure of thermal anomalies
  in the ground introduced by
• the presence of landmines.
• Ground Penetrating Radar ( GPR )
• - it detects dielectric discontinuities in the
  ground and provides information
• about the buried object.
• Thermal Neutron Activation ( TNA )
• - It detects the presence of nitrogen to
  confirm or reject suspect targets
• derived from the 3 previous scanning
  sensors data fusion solution.

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CONCLUSIONS

• No single mine sensor has the potential to
  increase the probability of
• detection and decrease false alarm rate for
  all types of mines buried in
• all different environments conditions.
• Multisensors system could decrease
• - the false alarm rate
• - the amount of time spent to detect a
  mine
• - the operations costs
• It could increase demining safety and speed
• The multisensor system described is much faster
  and safer than the
• currently available manual methods.
• It represents a significant step towards a
  solution to the overall landmine
• detection problem.

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THANK YOU !!!
Always remember "Mine Awareness is a Question
of Attitude!" "Be Aware, Mines Don't Care! From
Canadian Forces National Defence Mine/countermine
Information Centre (NDMIC) s website.