Standoff detection of concealed handguns

An active technique for the standoff detection and identification of concealed conducting items such as handguns and knives is presented. This technique entails illuminating an object with wide range stepped millimetre wave radiation and inducing a local electromagnetic field comprised of a superposition of modes. The coupling to these modes from the illuminating and scattered fields is, in general, frequency dependent and this forms the basis for the detection and identification of conducting items. The object needs to be fully illuminated if a full spectrum of modes and therefore a full frequency response are to be excited and collected. The scattered EM power is measured at "stand off" distance of several metres as the illuminating field is frequency swept and patterns in frequency response characteristic to the target item being sought are looked for. This system relies on contributions from the aspect independent late time responses employed by Baum1 together with aspect independent information derived specifically from gun barrels and polarisation from scattering effects. This technique is suitable for a deployable gun and concealed weapons detection system and does not rely on imaging techniques for determining the presence of a gun. Experimental sets of responses from typical metal or partially conducting objects such as keys, mobile phones and concealed handguns are presented at a range of frequencies.