الفهرس 
Overview of Landmine Detection Techniques
NEAR SURFACE GEOPHYISCSOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
 |  | from | 169 |  |  |
| | | from | 169 | | |
Abstract
Peace agreements may be signed, and hostilities may cease, but
landmines are an enduring legacy of conflict. Landmines are victimactivated
and indiscriminate; whoever triggers the mine, whether a
child or a soldier, becomes its victim. Mines emplaced during a
conflict against enemy forces can still kill or injure civilians decades
later until deactivated. Landmines pose a serious and ongoing threat
to civilians as these weapons can be embedded in a scattered manner
in a field cluttered with various materials and objects, and buried
underground at various depths.
In Egypt, the scope of the landmine problem is vast due to the
expenses of the land that are infested, as well as the suspected high
number of landmines that exist, with the environmental conditions,
proximity to development areas, and the need to clear often to great
depths adding to the complexity of the problem. Furthermore, the
clearance activities are severely hampered by having only limited
maps about the landmine situation from the time that the laying
operations took place. Even with the existent maps and due to the
environmental conditions, the information about the landmines
locations is not useful anymore .This adds to the complexity of
building a comprehensive picture of the landmine situation.
With this issue placed within the context of a rapidly expanding
population, extremely limited availability of usable land, and the need
to enhance development and infrastructure to support the growth of
the country, the landmines problem is considered to have a dramatic
impact upon the socio-economic and development potential of Egypt.
Landmine detection involves dealing with wide variety of mine
materials and shapes, different terrain and non-uniformity of clutter.
Removing an identified anomaly with all the care and attention given
to a landmine, to discover in vain that the effort was direoted towards
clearing a harmless object, is a time consuming and costly process.
Thus, it is expected that the characteristic signature for the presence
of the Iandmine should come from multiple sensors sensing different
physical properties of the landmine. A multiple sensor landmine
detection system should be able to detect mines, and differentiate
them from the surrounding clutter.
In this thesis we propose an investigational study to fuse nuclear
and geophysical methods for landmine detection. This thesis shows
that geophysical tools will be suitable for detecting either the casing
or the detonator of the landmine. And to distinguish the landmine
from the background clutter, nuclear techniques were used to detect
the explosive materials within the landmine.
Several geophysical techniques were used in this study, including
microgravity, electromagnetic, and magnetic tools. The neutron
backscattering technique was used as the nuclear technique for
explosive detection. After experimental setup in a real minefield
situation, the thesis concludes that fusing total gradient technique
along with neutron backscattering will be a suitable integration for
landmine detection. For this purpose, a fusion algorithm was
proposed and implemented along the thesis. Furthermore, as there is a
need to determine the depth of the landmine in addition to its location,
neural networks were used to estimate the landmine depth based on
its magnetic signature. In the thesis, Hopfield neural network were
designed to process the magnetic gradient measurements produced by
a landmine. In addition, the algorithm was embedded in a
microcontroller chip to be performed at a reasonable operational
speed, and not too prohibitive a cost.