Performance Evaluation of Separated Aperture Sensor GPR System for Land Mine Detection

In this paper, the performance of the separated-aperture sensor working as ground- penetrating radar (GPR) is assessed over the operating frequency band. The capability of the separated-aperture sensor to detect buried targets is examined by evaluating and comparing the electromagnetic coupling between the transmitting and receiving antennas in two cases: (i) when the system is placed over an empty ground and (ii) when it is placed over a ground inside which a practical target is buried at the proper depth. The finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method is used for electromagnetic simulation and the results concerning the coupling between the transmitting and receiving antennas are presented considering various practical parameters such as the operating frequency, the electric properties of the ground soil and the buried target, and the depth at which the target is buried under the ground surface, it is shown that target detectability using the separated-aperture sensor is strongly dependent on all of the above parameters.