Nonlinear seismo-acoustic landmine detection (original) (raw)

The most commonly used devices for land mine detection are metal detectors that work by measuring the disturbance of an emitted electromagnetic field caused by the presence of metallic objects in the ground. For ferromagnetic objects, magnetometers are employed. These sensors measure the disturbance of the earth's natural electromagnetic field. Neither of these types of detectors can differentiate a mine from metallic debris; this leads to up to 1000 false alarms for each real mine. In addition, most modern antipersonnel mines are made out of plastic or wood with very few metal parts in them, so the metal detectors cannot detect them. Newer methods conceived to detect mines involve ground-penetrating radar, infrared imaging, X-ray backscattering, thermal neutron activation, and some others. Most of these methods rely on imaging and very often cannot differentiate a mine from rocks and other debris. The drawbacks of the other non-imaging techniques, such as thermal neutron activation, apart from system complexity, are the limited depth of penetration and the potential environmental and health danger. Acoustic methods of detecting mines were always a primary approach for underwater mine detection. However, earlier attempts to use acoustic energy for land mine detection were not successful due to a number of deficiencies. One method, House and Pape [1], identifies a buried object by viewing the images of the acoustic energy reflected from the soil and, therefore, is unable to differentiate a mine from debris with similar acoustic reflectivity. Other methods, Rogers and Don [2] and Caulfield [3], are based on the

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