Radar imaging and detection of objects buried in soil has potentially important applications in the areas of nonproliferation of weapons, environmental monitoring, hazardous-waste site location and assessment, and even archeology. In order to understand and exploit this potential, it is first necessary to understand how the soil responds to an electromagnetic wave, and how targets buried within the soil scatter the electromagnetic wave. We examine the response of the soil to a short pulse, and illustrate the roll of the complex dielectric permittivity of the soil in determining radar range resolution. This leads to a concept of an optimum frequency and bandwidth for imaging in a particular soil. We then propose a new definition for radar cross section which is consistent with the modified radar equation for use with buried targets. This radar cross section plays the same roll in the modified radar equation as the traditional radar cross section does in the free-space radar equation, and is directly comparable to it. The radar cross section of several canonical objects in lossy media is derived, and examples are given for several objecdsoil combinations.
Subsurface Sensing generally involves detecting, locating, discriminating, and identifying objects beneath or behind a surface. It finds numerous applications in many scientific and engineering branches, such as nonde-. The Sensing and Imaging (SI) Journal's scope is broad and truly multidisciplinary. It provides a competent forum, a "scientific home", for researchers and engineers working in this field as well as for users of sensors. Particularly, it covers subsurface sensing.An area that is heavily dependent on the development and application of advanced subsurface sensing technologies involves the detection, location, discrimination, and identification of objects and/or people hidden behind walls or underneath debris. This topic has received worldwide interest from the perspective of military utility and law enforcement, and has further relevance in the areas of disaster recovery operations (locating victims under debris, avalanches, etc.), intrusion detection, improving safety in the construction industry, etc. From a military perspective, current and future army units must be provided with tools that will give soldiers an advantage in the "new battlefield" of urban terrain warfare, in which door-to-door searches with possible enemy engagement are inevitable, and imaging technologies that can provide commanders with instantaneous, precise information (measured in feet, not meters) on the 3-D location and disposition of friendly, threat, and noncombatant personnel located inside a building before the building is entered are critical in preventing potential injury and death. This special issue of the SI journal will 337 1566-0184/05/1000-0337/0
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