Citation

Srimuk P, Boonpoonga A, Kaemarungsi K, Athikulwongse K, Dentri S. Sensors (Basel) 2022; 22(22): e8710.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2022, MDPI: Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute)

DOI

10.3390/s22228710

PMID

36433308

Abstract

This paper proposes the implementation of and experimentation with GPR for real-time automatic detection of buried IEDs. GPR, consisting of hardware and software, was implemented. A UWB antenna was designed and implemented, particularly for the operation of the GPR. The experiments were conducted in order to demonstrate the real-time automatic detection of buried IEDs using GPR with an R-CNN algorithm. In the experiments, the GPR was mounted on a pickup truck and a maintenance train in order to find the IEDs buried under a road and a railway, respectively. B-scan images were collected using the implemented GPR. R-CNN-based detection for the hyperbolic pattern, which indicates the buried IED, was performed along with pre-processing, for example, using zero offset removal, and background removal and filtering. Experimental results in terms of detecting the hyperbolic pattern in B-scan images were shown and verified that the proposed GPR system is superior to the conventional one using region analysis processing-based detection.

RESULTS also showed that pre-processing is required in order to improve and/or clean the hyperbolic pattern before detection. The GPR can automatically detect IEDs buried under roads and railways in real time by detecting the hyperbolic pattern appearing in the collected B-scan image.

Language: en

Keywords

automatic detection; GPR; ground-penetrating radar; IED; improvised explosive devices; R-CNN; region-based convolutional neural network; ultra-wideband antenna; UWB antenna