Ground-penetrating radar performance analysis using an empirical model

Meghan A. McGovern; Carl M. Wiggins; Steven S. Bishop

doi:10.1117/12.486364

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11 September 2003 Ground-penetrating radar performance analysis using an empirical model

Meghan A. McGovern, Carl M. Wiggins, Steven S. Bishop

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Proceedings Volume 5089, Detection and Remediation Technologies for Mines and Minelike Targets VIII; (2003) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.486364
Event: AeroSense 2003, 2003, Orlando, Florida, United States

Abstract

An empirical performance model for the Mine Hunter/Killer (MH/K) Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) was developed and used to analyze the performance of this GPR as a function of soil type, soil moisture, mine casing and mine depth. The empirical modeling approach used can be modified to evaluate the performance of other GPRs if adequate data are collected. All of the data were reprocessed with the final MH/K automatic target recognition (ATR) algorithm so that performance variations due to environmental conditions could be characterized independently of ATR changes. The model estimates Probability of Detection (Pd) and False Alarm Rate (FAR) for buried mines as a function of ATR confidence, estimated soil moisture content (dry, moist or wet), mine casing (metal or plastic), burial depth (shallow or deep) and soil type (dirt or gravel). Time Domain Reflectometry (TDR) moisture probe measurements at one location augmented with qualitative observations of the soil conditions characterized the soil moisture content. The performance model was created from 52 alarm files collected at a temperate US Army test site over a total of 4 weeks during a 13-month period. The results show that for the MH/K GPR performance against plastic mines in dirt improves as soil moisture increases and performance in gravel is better overall than in dirt.

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Meghan A. McGovern, Carl M. Wiggins, and Steven S. Bishop "Ground-penetrating radar performance analysis using an empirical model", Proc. SPIE 5089, Detection and Remediation Technologies for Mines and Minelike Targets VIII, (11 September 2003); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.486364

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