Buried Target Detection with a UAV Based GPSAR-System using a Circle-Hough-Transformation

The use of unmanned aerial vehicles as carriers for remote sensing became more and more popular over the past few years. As a result, UAV-based ground penetrating synthetic aperture radars were presented. These sensor systems can be used in many different applications, such as archaeology or landmine detection. Especially due to the increasing number of newly buried landmines it is important to perform this task efficiently. The goal of this paper is to present a new detection algorithm to detect shallowly buried objects with a UVA-based GPSAR-system. Therefore the phase image of a complex GPSAR-image is used to apply a Circle-Hough-Transformation. Due to the extent of the target signatures over several depths, the detections from multiple focusing depths could be combined and increase the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) of the system. Results show that with the Circle-Hough-Transformation the number of false alarms is less and the true detections, with the presence of circular signatures in the phase image, are at the same level as with an constant false alarm rate detector.