Application of feature extraction methods for landmine detection using the Wichmann/Niitek ground-penetrating radar

Ground-penetrating radar (GPR) has been proposed as an alternative to classical electromagnetic induction techniques for the landmine detection problem. The Wichmann/Niitek system provides a good platform for novel GPR-based antitank mine detection and classification algorithm development due to its extremely high SNR. When the GPR sensor is mounted on a moving vehicle, the target signatures are hyperbolas in a time-domain data record. The goal of this work is to extract useful features that exploit this knowledge in order to improve target detection. The algorithms can be divided into two steps: feature extraction and classification. Preprocessing is also considered to remove both stationary effects and nonstationary drift of the data and to improve the contrast of the desired hyperbolas. The algorithm is evaluated using real data over primarily plastic antitank mines collected with a fielded GPR sensor at a government test site.