UWB Localization for Discrimination-Enabled Metal Detectors in Humanitarian Demining

Handheld metal detectors are ubiquitous devices in humanitarian demining. They are sensitive to extremely small metallic objects as in low-metallic content landmines. However, this leads to enormous false alarm rates (1 to 1000). Recent research in electromagnetic induction techniques for discrimination of hazardous metallic targets and clutter gives rise to a hope of faster, smarter and safer mine detection. These techniques require that position of the metal detector's sensor head be known to sub-centimeter accuracy. To this aim, we present and evaluate an ultra-wide bandwidth positioning embedded system. We evaluate its precision and accuracy, and show that it can be used for tracking of the sensor head with at least 40 Hz positon refresh rate. The achieved measurement uncertainty is better than 10 cm. We discuss the further improvements that can be made in such a localization system.