Detector Apparatus and Method

NASA Tech Briefs, Jul 2004 by Arndt, G Dickey, Ngo, Phong H, Carl, James R, Byerly, Kent A, Dusl, John

U.S. Patent No. 6,559,645

On average, every 20 minutes someone in the world loses a limb to a landmine. Shifting sands and the like result in mines being widely displaced from their original location. Thus, it is desirable that a mine detector be highly sensitive to allow location of small metal objects such as miniature mines at various depths. It is even more preferable to have a metal detector that would locate underground mines four or more times deeper than now possible.

The new apparatus is a transceiver suitable for detecting metallic materials, such as metallic mines, within an environment. The transceiver includes a digital waveform generator used to transmit a signal into the environment, and a receiver that produces a digital received signal. A tracking module compares an in-phase and quadrature received signal to produce a spectral transfer function of the magnetic transceiver over a selected range of frequencies. The transceiver creates a reference transfer function, which is then stored in memory. Subsequently measured transfer functions will vary depending on the presence of metal in environment that was not present when the reference transfer function was determined.

The system can be used in the presence of other antennas, metal, and electronics that may comprise a plastic mine detector. The magnetic transceiver remains highly sensitive to metallic material that may be located in various portions of the environment, and that could be detected by sweeping the detector over the ground.

For more information on the inventions described here, contact the appropriate NASA Field Center's Innovative Technology Transfer Partnerships (ITTP) Office. See page 10 for a list of office contacts.

G. Dickey Arndt, Phong H. Ngo, James R. Carl, Kent A. Byerly, and John Dusl, Johnson Space Center