Statistical signal processing techniques for the detection of low-metal landmines using EMI and GPR sensors (topic area: E.1)

The Joint UXO Coordination Office (JUXOCO) at Ft. Belvoir, VA is sponsoring a series of experiments designed to establish a performance baseline for a variety of sensors. The purpose of these experiments is to determine if advanced algorithms are useful for detecting low-metallic content mines and if ground penetrating radar (GPR) sensors can help mitigate the high false alarm rates associated with electromagnetic induction (EMI) sensors. In this paper, we describe the results of two data collection and algorithm development efforts. One involves a prototype frequency-domain EMI system; the other involves a prototype wide-band GPR system. In both cases, substantial performance improvements over baseline are achieved using statistically-based signal processing algorithms.