Developments in ground-penetrating radar at LLNL
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) is developing a side-looking, ground-penetrating impulse radar system that will eventually be mounted on an airborne platform to locate buried minefields. Presently, the radar system is mounted on top of a 60-foot adjustable boom. Several unique as well as commercial antennas having bandwidths in the 200 to 2000 MHz range are being experimented with. Also, LLNL-developed monocycle pulse generators are tailored to be most efficient over this frequency range. A technical description of the system will be presented with details about the video pulser, the wideband antennas, the receiver hardware, and the data acquisition system. The receiver and data acquisition hardware consist of off-the-shelf components. Testing of this system is conducted on a minefield located at the Nevada Test Site (NTS). The minefield contains real and surrogate mines of various sizes placed in natural vegetation. Some areas of the minefield have been cleared for non-cluttered studies. In addition, both metal and plastic mines are buried in the minefield. There is room in the NTS minefield for burying additional objects, such as unexploded ordnance, and this is expected to be done in the future. Recent results indicate success in imaging the NTS minefield using the GPR system. The data has been processed using in-house image reconstruction software, and has been registered with the ground truth data. Images showing clearly visible mines, surface reference markers, and ground clutter will be presented.
- Research Organization:
- Lawrence Livermore National Lab., CA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE, Washington, DC (United States)
- DOE Contract Number:
- W-7405-ENG-48
- OSTI ID:
- 10157780
- Report Number(s):
- UCRL-JC-116074; CONF-9405159-1; ON: DE94012236
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: Unexploded ordnance detection and range-remediation conference,Golden, CO (United States),17-19 May 1994; Other Information: PBD: May 1994
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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