Microwave detection of buried mines using non-contact, synthetic near-field focusing (Reprinted from IEE Proceedings)

Existing ground penetrating radars (GPR) are limited in their 3-D resolutio n. For the detection of buried land-mines, their performance is also seriou sly restricted by 'clutter. Recent work by the authors has concentrated on removing these limitations by employing multi-static synthetic focusing fro m a 2-D real aperture. This contribution presents this novel concept, descr ibes the proposed implementation. examines the influence of clutter and of various ground features on the system's performance, and discusses such pra cticalities as digitisation and timesharing of a single transmitter and rec eiver. Experimental results from a variety of scenarios are presented.