Airborne Tripwire Detection Using a Synthetic Aperture Radar

Antipersonnel fragmentation mines are relatively large metallic mines, which are only partially buried and often triggered by a metallic tripwire. In humanitarian mine clearance, the search for the wires is usually carried out manually. As a new approach, an airborne system for the detection of tripwires using a synthetic aperture radar is presented. The system consists of an industrial multicopter, a frequency-modulated continuous-wave radar, and a real time kinematic global navigation satellite system. For image formation, a backprojection algorithm is used. Measurements with tripwires attached to a dummy mine successfully demonstrate the functionality of this system approach. In addition, the influence of wire length, vegetation, and incidence angle are investigated. It is shown that several overflights with different directions of flight are required to detect randomly oriented tripwires.