Millimeter wave imaging system for land mine detection

Applications using millimeter wave (mmW) and THz radiation have increased during the past few years. One of the principal applications of these technologies is the detection and identification of objects buried beneath the soil, in particular land mines and unexploded ordnances. A novel active mmW scanning imaging system was developed for this purpose. It is a hyperspectral system that collects images at different mmW frequencies from 90 to 140 GHz using a vector network analyzer collecting backscattering mmW radiation from the buried sample. A multivariate statistical method, principal components analysis, is applied to extract useful information from these images. This method is applied to images of different objects and experimental conditions. (C) 2006 Optical Society of America.