Land Mine Detection: Technologies and Their Limitations

Land mine detection remains a challenge. Humanitarian and military organizations still rely on metal detectors and handheld probes to detect buried mines. Even the best metal detectors currently available, while effective against high metal content mines, suffer from reduced sensitivity to mines with low metal content and are subject to false alarms from metallic clutter. Researchers are actively pursuing a variety of new detection technologies. Improved electromagnetic induction devices (metal detectors) are being designed to increase sensitivity while rejecting some metallic clutter. Ground-penetrating radar, heavily studied over the past 15 years, is coming to the fore as a mine detection tool. Emerging approaches, such as nuclear-quadrupole resonance detectors and acoustic/seismic detectors, rely on physical principles that are different from the aforementioned electromagnetic approaches, and offer the promise of rejecting clutter while maintaining sensitivity. Yet other approaches, including infrared detection, neutron scattering, vapor detection, and x-ray scattering, are also being investigated. This talk will review these approaches and their strengths and limitations when viewed against the metrics of sensitivity, clutter rejection, standoff, and speed. It is unlikely that any single approach will solve the problem in the near term, however the combined application of technologies promises to improve the options available for those individuals with the heavy burden of mine detection.