MINEHOUND production development

This paper describes the further engineering development and performance of the MINEHOUND affordable humanitarian mine detector, sponsored by the UK Department for International Development and developed by ERA Technology. Using a radically different patented approach from conventional ground penetrating radar (GPR) designs, in terms of the man machine interface, MINEHOUND offers simplicity of use and affordability, both key factors in humanitarian demining operations. Trials were carried out during the period 2002-2004 and have been reported at SPIE 2002 and SPIE 2004. MINEHOUND has the capability of detecting completely non-metallic mines and offers an affordable solution to hand held mine detection. The GPR is a time-domain radar transmitting 1ns duration impulses at a repetition frequency of 1MHz. The GPR transmitter- receiver and associated control and signal processing is mounted on a compact purpose designed printed circuit board 220mm by 100mm. A dedicated state of the art “Blackfin” DSP processor is used to provide all control and signal processing functions. Trials of batches of MINEHOUND are planned for 2005 in the Cambodia and Angola as well as the Balkans.