scispace - formally typeset
Search or ask a question
Author

Paul Curtis

Bio: Paul Curtis is an academic researcher from ERA Technology Ltd. The author has contributed to research in topics: Radar & Ground-penetrating radar. The author has an hindex of 3, co-authored 6 publications receiving 70 citations.

Papers
More filters
Proceedings ArticleDOI
10 Jun 2005
TL;DR: MINEHOUND as mentioned in this paper is an affordable humanitarian mine detector, sponsored by the UK Department for International Development and developed by ERA Technology using a radically different patented approach from conventional ground penetrating radar (GPR) designs, in terms of the man machine interface, offers simplicity of use and affordability.
Abstract: This paper describes the further engineering development and performance of the MINEHOUND affordable humanitarian mine detector, sponsored by the UK Department for International Development and developed by ERA Technology. Using a radically different patented approach from conventional ground penetrating radar (GPR) designs, in terms of the man machine interface, MINEHOUND offers simplicity of use and affordability, both key factors in humanitarian demining operations. Trials were carried out during the period 2002-2004 and have been reported at SPIE 2002 and SPIE 2004. MINEHOUND has the capability of detecting completely non-metallic mines and offers an affordable solution to hand held mine detection. The GPR is a time-domain radar transmitting 1ns duration impulses at a repetition frequency of 1MHz. The GPR transmitter- receiver and associated control and signal processing is mounted on a compact purpose designed printed circuit board 220mm by 100mm. A dedicated state of the art “Blackfin” DSP processor is used to provide all control and signal processing functions. Trials of batches of MINEHOUND are planned for 2005 in the Cambodia and Angola as well as the Balkans.

41 citations

Proceedings ArticleDOI
05 May 2006
TL;DR: The trials of the MINEHOUNDTM dual sensor, land mine detector carried out in Cambodia, Bosnia and Angola demonstrated that new technology can be brought to humanitarian clearance operations in a safe and controlled manner and enabled optimisation of the production design.
Abstract: This paper describes the trials of the MINEHOUNDTM dual sensor, land mine detector carried out in Cambodia, Bosnia and Angola. MINEHOUNDTM has been developed for use in humanitarian demining as a means of improving the efficiency of clearance operations. The trials were sponsored by the UK Department for International Development (DFID). ERA Technology Ltd conducted the trials, which were monitored by staff drawn from the countries participating in the International Test and Evaluation Programme (ITEP) for humanitarian de-mining. Experienced deminers from the Mines Advisory Group (MAG) and Norwegian Peoples Aid (NPA) used the pre-production units in live minefields. The objectives of the trial were: 1. To record information on the performance of MINEHOUNDTM when used in a live minefield. 2. To determine the reduction in False Alarm Rate (FAR) that could be achieved using a dual sensor mine detector. The trials were conducted in three mine-affected countries for a period of eight weeks per country; the programme of trials ran from July 2005 to December 2005, with an additional smaller trial in late February 2006. The results of the trials showed that MINEHOUNDTM achieved 100% detection of the mines encountered and an improvement in FAR of better than 5:1 compared with a basic metal detector. The trials enabled optimisation of the production design and clearly demonstrated that new technology can be brought to humanitarian clearance operations in a safe and controlled manner. As a result of the highly successful trials, Vallon and ERA will produce the MINEHOUNDTM (Type number VMR1) starting in Q3 of 2006.© (2006) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.

19 citations

Proceedings ArticleDOI
21 Sep 2004
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors describe the further development of the MINETECT affordable humanitarian mine detector produced by ERA Technology with sponsorship from the UK Department for International Development, which offers simplicity of use and affordability, both key factors in humanitarian demining operations.
Abstract: This paper describes the further development of the MINETECT affordable humanitarian mine detector produced by ERA Technology with sponsorship from the UK Department for International Development. Using a radically different patented approach from conventional ground penetrating radar (GPR) designs in terms of the man machine interface, MINETECT offers simplicity of use and affordability, both key factors in humanitarian demining operations. Following trials in 2002 and reported at SPIE 2002, further development work including research on classifying mines, based on data from planned trials in the United Kingdom, is presented. MINETECT has the capability of detecting completely non-metallic mines and offers a considerable improvement in hand-held mine detection.

7 citations

Proceedings ArticleDOI
07 May 2008
TL;DR: A single board ultra-wideband (UWB) radar has been developed to provide a compact, rugged, high performance capability for hand held applications such as anti-personnel landmine detection as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: A single board ultra-wideband (UWB) radar has been developed to provide a compact, rugged, high performance capability for hand held applications such as anti-personnel landmine detection. This paper discusses the radar system developed by ERA Technology, which provides the radar functionality of the MINEHOUND dual sensor detector. (4 pages)

3 citations

Proceedings ArticleDOI
27 Apr 2007
TL;DR: The MINEHOUND detector as mentioned in this paper combines a metal detector with a ground Penetrating radar (GPR) for mine detection in the field trials conducted by the UK Department for International Development (DfID) in 2005 and 2006.
Abstract: The UK Department for International Development (DfID), in collaboration with the German Foreign Ministry (Auswartiges Amt), contracted ERA Technology to carry out extensive field trials in Cambodia, Bosnia and Angola of an advanced technology, dual sensor, and hand-held landmine detector system called MINEHOUND™ This detector combines a metal detector with a Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) As a result of extremely successful trials MINEHOUND™ was developed as a product by ERA Technology and Vallon GmbH and has been available for sale since late 2006 This paper describes the transition to production of the detector Keywords: Landmine detection, humanitarian, de-mining, ground penetrating radar, multi sensor INTRODUCTION MINEHOUND™ - VMR2 is an advanced, dual sensor, mine detector comprising a Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) developed by ERA Technology Ltd (UK) and an induction Metal Detector (MD) based on the VMH3 manufactured by Vallon GmbH (FRG) MINEHOUND™ is designed to meet the user requirements for ease of use, ruggedness and functionality Both the MD and GPR provide audio outputs, which give the operator information on the size of the target; the GPR also provides information on the depth and symmetry of the target As the GPR will only respond to targets with a significant radar cross-section, and hence, physical dimensions, sources of false alarm to the metal detector, such as bullets, casings and fragmentation are rejected This results in a significant reduction in the false alarm rate that deminers typically suffer from when using a metal detector alone Field trials in Cambodia, Bosnia and Angola in 2005 and 2006 showed that MINEHOUND could reduce false alarms in real minefields by up to 7:1 and typically 5:1as described in [1]

2 citations


Cited by
More filters
Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The specific aspects of borehole radar are discussed and recent developments to become more sensitive to orientation and to exploit the supplementary information in different components in polarimetric uses of radar data are described.
Abstract: During the past 80 years, ground-penetrating radar (GPR) has evolved from a skeptically received glacier sounder to a full multicomponent 3D volume-imaging and characterization device. The tool can be calibrated to allow for quantitative estimates of physical properties such as water content. Because of its high resolution, GPR is a valuable tool for quantifying subsurface heterogeneity, and its ability to see nonmetallic and metallic objects makes it a useful mapping tool to detect, localize, and characterize buried objects. No tool solves all problems; so to determine whether GPR is appropriate for a given problem, studying the reasons for failure can provide an understanding of the basics, which in turn can help determine whether GPR is appropriate for a given problem. We discuss the specific aspects of borehole radar and describe recent developments to become more sensitiveto orientation and to exploit the supplementary information in different components in polarimetric uses of radar data. Multicomponent GPR data contain more diverse geometric information than single-channel data, and this is exploited in developed dedicated imaging algorithms. The evolution of these imaging schemes is discussed for ground-coupled and air-coupled antennas. For air-coupled antennas, the measured radiated wavefield can be used as the basis for the wavefield extrapolator in linear-inversion schemes with an imaging condition, which eliminates the source-time function and corrects for the measured radiation pattern. A handheld GPR system coupled with a metal detector is ready for routine use in mine fields. Recent advances in modeling, tomography, and full-waveform inversion, as well as Green's function extraction through correlation and deconvolution, show much promise in this field.

165 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: A GPR survey was conducted on a designed scenario that included the most commonly buried items in historic battle fields, such as mines, projectiles and mortar grenades, and neural networks and logistic regression algorithms were shown to be able to discriminate between potential targets and clutter.
Abstract: Landmine clearance is an ongoing problem that currently affects millions of people around the world. This study evaluates the effectiveness of ground penetrating radar (GPR) in demining and unexploded ordnance detection using 2.3-GHz and 1-GHz high-frequency antennas. An automated detection tool based on machine learning techniques is also presented with the aim of automatically detecting underground explosive artifacts. A GPR survey was conducted on a designed scenario that included the most commonly buried items in historic battle fields, such as mines, projectiles and mortar grenades. The buried targets were identified using both frequencies, although the higher vertical resolution provided by the 2.3-GHz antenna allowed for better recognition of the reflection patterns. The targets were also detected automatically using machine learning techniques. Neural networks and logistic regression algorithms were shown to be able to discriminate between potential targets and clutter. The neural network had the most success, with accuracies ranging from 89% to 92% for the 1-GHz and 2.3-GHz antennas, respectively.

71 citations

Proceedings ArticleDOI
10 Jun 2005
TL;DR: MINEHOUND as mentioned in this paper is an affordable humanitarian mine detector, sponsored by the UK Department for International Development and developed by ERA Technology using a radically different patented approach from conventional ground penetrating radar (GPR) designs, in terms of the man machine interface, offers simplicity of use and affordability.
Abstract: This paper describes the further engineering development and performance of the MINEHOUND affordable humanitarian mine detector, sponsored by the UK Department for International Development and developed by ERA Technology. Using a radically different patented approach from conventional ground penetrating radar (GPR) designs, in terms of the man machine interface, MINEHOUND offers simplicity of use and affordability, both key factors in humanitarian demining operations. Trials were carried out during the period 2002-2004 and have been reported at SPIE 2002 and SPIE 2004. MINEHOUND has the capability of detecting completely non-metallic mines and offers an affordable solution to hand held mine detection. The GPR is a time-domain radar transmitting 1ns duration impulses at a repetition frequency of 1MHz. The GPR transmitter- receiver and associated control and signal processing is mounted on a compact purpose designed printed circuit board 220mm by 100mm. A dedicated state of the art “Blackfin” DSP processor is used to provide all control and signal processing functions. Trials of batches of MINEHOUND are planned for 2005 in the Cambodia and Angola as well as the Balkans.

41 citations

Book ChapterDOI
01 Jan 2009
TL;DR: In this paper, a dual sensor technology combining EMI and ground penetrating radar (GPR) has been used to detect landmines using electromagnetic induction (EMI) techniques.
Abstract: Detection of landmines using electromagnetic induction (EMI) techniques is well established and a range of metal detectors is commercially available. Recent developments using dual sensor technology combining EMI and ground penetrating radar (GPR) have enabled improved discrimination against small metal fragments to be demonstrated in live minefields. Reductions of up to 7:1 compared with the standard metal detector have been achieved in the field by hand held systems such as the UK-German MINEHOUND/VMR2 system and the US AN/PSS-14 (formerly HSTAMIDS: Handheld Standoff Mine Detection System).

39 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the magnetic dipole polarizability tensors of small metallic objects and low metal anti-personnel mine surrogates are obtained for demining operations, with significant variance observed between those of mine and clutter.
Abstract: The magnetic dipole polarizability tensor is an object-specific property possessing information about the size, shape, and material. This information could be used by electromagnetic induction sensors typically used for demining operations to discriminate between buried mines and clutter, reducing false alarm rates, and improving demining throughput and safety. This paper presents a methodology capable of obtaining the spectroscopic tensors of small metallic objects and low metal anti-personnel mine surrogates. The experimental results are validated against simulated and analytical solutions to ensure that the obtained tensor truly represents the absolute object tensor. Absolute tensors for a number of typical clutter items and mine surrogates are presented, with significant variance observed between those of mine and clutter.

38 citations