Army Research Laboratory Ultra-Wideband Crane Sar: System Overview And Results Of Early Ground Penetrating Radar Studies

Army Research Laboratory (ARL) and Massachusetts Institute of Technology/Lincoln Laboratory (MIT/LL)<br>have been working in the field of ultra-wideband (UWB) synthetic aperture imaging radar (SAR) for foliage<br>penetration for a number of years. In 1993, ARL was appointed executing agent for a Defense Intelligence Agency<br>program to investigate ground penetrating radars on airborne platforms. In the summer of 1993 an experiment was<br>conducted at Yuma Proving Ground, Arizona involving many existing airborne radar sensors to assess GPR<br>potential. Data collected by Stanford Research Institute International on a minefield emplaced at Yuma is presented,<br>along with statistics of the targets and clutter as a function of frequency and depression angle, to show the current<br>capability and potential of improved sensors. An automatic group target detection algorithm designed to find<br>distributed targets is discussed and results of applying it to the minefield data are shown. Based on analysis of data<br>collected at Yuma and other research conducted, a new crane-based UWB SAR collection asset has been designed<br>and built at ARL that is fully polarimetric and covers a frequency range of 60 MHz to 1 GHz. This highly capable<br>radar system is described, and future data collection plans are discussed.