TABLE OF CONTENTS GPR is beginning to be fielded as a sensor for mine detection where its ability against the minimum metal mine often surpasses the ubiquitous metal detector. The US HSTAMIDS hand-held detector is now being evaluated in Afghanistan. Throughout the world, airborne, vehicle mounted and hand-held systems have been extensively researched, developed and trialled. The process has taken over two decades from the early systems devised for Vietnam and the Falkland Islands and has often been fragmented and intermittent.
In most soils, GPR can detect mines at greater depths than the metal detector, but in clay or salt-laden soils it does not perform as well. However, in some mineralised soils where the metal detector struggles, GPR has a performance advantage.
This suggests that it is important that the processing built into a GPR sensor can recognise difficult soil conditions and alert the operator to a potential performance degradation. Furthermore, GPR has to overcome many potential sources of false alarm due to clutter, which include large stones, animal burrows, cracks in the soil surface, pooled water in surface and sub-surface hollows, tree roots, changes in surface topography and changes in vertical or lateral soil structure.
As GPR is now reaching a level of technology readiness, it is vital that it is tested in a way that exposes all aspects of performance. Many test procedures developed for metal detector technology are inappropriate for GPR, which must take into account not just the mass of metal in the mine but the type...
