A statistical approach to landmine detection using broadband electromagnetic induction data

The response of time-domain electromagnetic induction (EMI) sensors, which have been used almost exclusively for landmine detection, is related to the amount of metal present in the object and its distance from the sensor. Unluckily, there is often a significant amount of metallic clutter in the env...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:IEEE transactions on geoscience and remote sensing 2002-04, Vol.40 (4), p.950-962
Main Authors: Collins, L., Ping Gao, Schofield, D., Moulton, J.P., Makowsky, L.C., Reidy, D.M., Weaver, R.C.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Algorithms
Applied geophysics
Broadband
Buried object detection
Clutter
Earth sciences
Earth, ocean, space
Electromagnetic induction
Electromagnetic interference
Engineering and environment geology. Geothermics
Exact sciences and technology
False alarms
Internal geophysics
Land mines
Landmine detection
Performance evaluation
Physics
Pollution, environment geology
Sensors
Signal processing algorithms
Soil
Soil (material)
Testing
Time domain analysis
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Summary:The response of time-domain electromagnetic induction (EMI) sensors, which have been used almost exclusively for landmine detection, is related to the amount of metal present in the object and its distance from the sensor. Unluckily, there is often a significant amount of metallic clutter in the environment that also induces an EMI response. Consequently, EMI sensors employing detection, algorithms based solely on metal content suffer from large false alarm rates. To mitigate this false alarm problem for mines with substantial metal content, statistical algorithms have been developed that exploit models of the underlying physics. In such models it is commonly assumed that the soil has a negligible effect on the sensor response, thus the object is modeled in "free space." We report on studies that were performed to test, the hypotheses that for broadband EMI sensors: 1) soil cannot be modeled as free space when the buried object has low metal content and 2) advanced signal processing algorithms can be applied to reduce the false alarm rates. Our results show that soil cannot be modeled as free space and that when modeling soil correctly our advanced algorithms reduced the false alarm probability by up to a factor of 10 in blind tests.
ISSN:0196-2892
1558-0644
DOI:10.1109/TGRS.2002.1006387