NODUDES - NOn-contact Demining Using Software DEfined Radar and droneS

NODUDES (NOn-contact Demining Using Software DEfined Radar and droneS) arises from a collaboration recently activated between Geomatics Division of CTTC and Prof. Vito Pascazio research group operating at the Department of Engineering (DING) of the University of Naples-Parthenope. The topic is the development of a bistatic radar system based on the combined use of two or more drones to carry out Ground Penetrating measurements aimed at supporting the demining of dielectric personnel mines. Although the topic of demining has been dealt in the last decades by several researchers, so far the detection and ranging of these weapons is not solved with sufficient accuracy. The main goal of the study is to implement a Radar hardware to be used in a dual/multiple drone’s fleet.  The investigation of the optimal design and technical requirements includes the synchronization of the different radar transceiver (SDR boards) main task of the contract for the CTTC team. At the same time, the processing of the acquired data demands to identify the choice of a proper frequency range and bandwidth to satisfy the requirements in terms of spatial resolution, penetration depth and signal-to-noise ratio. To allow the use of coherent imaging approaches, proper strategies must be adopted by exploiting the synchronization to obtain the temporal coherence between transmitted and received signals in bistatic measurements.