A Sparse Sampling Technique for Microwave Holographic Radar Imaging of Buried Plastic-Cased Antipersonnel Landmines

A holographic subsurface radar operating at 2 GHz has been used to generate microwave images of landmines buried in dry sand. The spatial sampling of the region of interest is obtained by a 3-D mechanical scanner mounted on a robotic platform. The aim of this paper is to investigate the application of sparse sampling to reduce the number of sampling positions with the advantage of a reduced scanning time. The holograms of shallow targets have been processed with a modified version of the angular spectrum algorithm to detect the soil-target interface and estimate the dielectric permittivity of the soil. The new microwave images with reduced spatial sampling and enhanced contrast will make detection faster and improve ROC performance.