Executive Summary : | Ground penetrating radar (GPR) is a high-resolution electromagnetic sensor to investigate the Earth’s shallow subsurface. GPR techniques are potentially powerful approach to non-destructive testing of a wide range of possible applications. These vary from the measurement of material parameters, thickness, dielectric constant, geophysical prospecting, archaeological investigation, detection of buried objects such as pipes, cables, mines, etc. The landmines and unexploded ordnances (UXOs) represent a grave crisis for the humankind across the globe. In India, the threat of land mines and UXOs are growing in the areas affected by terrorism. Several researchers across the world have expressed that GPR can be a very effective tool for detecting and locating various types of metallic and nonmetallic landmines, UXOs, and other buried objects. In this project, it is proposed to develop GPR system for detections of landmines, UXOs, and hidden weapons. These applications require very high resolution, reductions of clutters, and high-end signal processing software, and most importantly an accurate model to represent the complex GPR scenarios. Developing efficient signal processing algorithm to filter out the clutters, improving detection probability, and realizing a portable hardware are the key challenges of the GPR system intended for the applications. Investigators would like to adopt the following steps to realize the GPR system: 1) Developing an efficient and accurate model to simulate the GPR scenarios 2) Developing antenna and conceptual hardware for laboratory testing of GPR 3) Developing signal processing algorithms for detection of small objects similar to landmines and UXOs. The key delivery of this project is a prototype of the GPR system with assembled hardware and necessary software. Subsequently, this project is expected to make a prospectus for indigenous development of GPR products for both defense and commercial applications. Keywords: GPR, UWB Radar, Modelling, Signal processing, Antenna, 3D imaging, Inversion, Detection. |
Co-PI: | Dr Ajit Kumar Sahoo, Assistant Professor, Dr Sudipta Maity, Assistant Professor, Dr Prasun Chongder, Assistant Professor, Dr Debiprasad Priyabrata Acharya, Professor, National Institute of Technology (NIT) Rourkela |