Industrial PhD Studentship in Unmanned Aerial Vehicle deployed Ground-Penetrating Radar for Buried Object Detection

这项研究旨在推进无人机上部署探地雷达(GPR)的最新技术。人们对能够探测掩埋目标的机载系统的商业兴趣日益增长，这些应用包括国防、人道主义岩土工程和考古应用。该项目是与DSTL合作的，并得到了iCASE奖学金的支持。重量和能源对于无人机应用来说是非常重要的，因此这个博士研究项目将研究开发轻型天线及其相关耦合部件的具体技术挑战。雷达电子硬件适用于无人机部署的探地雷达也将是一个潜在的研究领域。获取地面区域信息的一种方法是使用合成孔径雷达技术，这是该项目进一步推进的潜在主题领域。。将为每种型号开发不同的天线阵列，因为这些型号具有不同的科学挑战。对于地面车辆，地面的雷达反射信号呈现出严重的混叠信号，特别是在地面耦合如此多变的情况下。在空中交通工具的情况下，天线的设计必须最小化信号衰减/最大化方向性，而地面负载在很大程度上可以忽略。虽然这些都是不同的考虑因素，但有一些互补的方面使两种部署方案适合在一个项目中进行调查，例如，轻型天线和电子系统部件的设计。该项目将专注于生产适合未来在无人驾驶飞行器上使用的探地雷达天线。该项目的主要阶段是：1.调查适用于近距离模式的探地雷达的现有和新的轻型天线设计(天线接触地面或略高于地面，但距离仍然足够近，以产生地面耦合效应)和单独设计的远离模式(空中发射)。2.通过建模和实验室测试设计新的天线，考虑到要求规格，特别是尺寸、重量和空气动力学方面的要求。所设计的天线需要适合在阵列中部署，以允许足够的地面覆盖。近距离和远距离模式可能需要非常不同的阵列密度，应该仔细建模。阵列设计可能涉及薄膜/共形/柔性/光学透明超宽带天线等新概念，例如使用石墨烯或更传统的金属薄膜(ITO/Ti)。此外，还将考虑研究在保持足够性能的同时减小天线尺寸的分形法和电子带隙方法。制造最高性能的模拟近端和远端阵列设计。演示一个正常工作的雷达系统，将两个天线阵列变种作为单独的插件。密歇根大学最近投资了一台可用于这些测试的16通道VNA。然后，通过利用商业雷达IC的最新发展，在车辆上部署应该是可能的--在体积小、重量轻和低功率的限制下实现良好的信噪比。学生将与获得信号处理相关奖学金的研究人员合作，他们的共同努力将建立一个整体更强大的输出，但这一提议本身将产生非常有价值的结果。注：将天线阵列集成到无人驾驶车辆上不在项目范围内。然而，天线阵列的设计将满足实际的重量、大小和功率要求；算法设计适用于移动数据处理。

The research is aimed at advancing the state-of-the-art in the deployment of ground-penetrating radar (GPR) from unmanned aerial vehicles. There is a growing commercial interest in airborne systems that are capable of detecting buried targets for a range of applications including defence, humanitarian geotechnical, and archaeological applications. The project is in partnership with Dstl and supported by an iCASE scholarship.Weight and energy are at a premium for unmanned aerial vehicle applications, and therefore this PhD research project will investigate the specific technological challenges of developing lightweight antennas and their associated coupling components. Radar electronic hardware suitable for a UAV deployed GPR will also be a potential area of research. An approach for obtaining information over an area of ground is to use synthetic aperture radar techniques and this is a further potential subject area for the project to advance. . Antenna arrays variants will be developed for each, as these have different scientific challenges. For the case of ground vehicles, the radar reflection from the ground presents a serious confounding signal, especially as the ground coupling is so variable. In the case of airborne vehicles, the antennas must be designed to minimise signal attenuation / maximise directivity and ground loading can largely be ignored. Although these are different considerations, there are complementary aspects that make both deployment scenarios suitable for investigation in one project, for example, the design of light-weight antennas and electronic system components.The project will focus on producing GPR antennas suitable for future use on unmanned aerial vehicles. The main stages of this project are:1. Investigate existing and new designs of lightweight antennas that are suitable for GPR when deployed in proximal mode (antennas either touching the ground or slightly offset above the ground but still close enough to have a ground-coupling effect) and a separate design for stand-off mode (air-launched). 2. Design new antennas via modelling and laboratory tests, taking account of the requirement specification, especially aspects of size, weight and aerodynamics. The designed antennas need to be suitable for deployment in arrays to allow for sufficient ground coverage. The proximal and stand-off modes may require very different array densities and should be carefully modelled. The array design could involve new concepts such as thin-film/conformal/flexible/optically transparent ultra-wide-band antennas, for instance using graphene or more conventional metal films (ITO / Ti). Additional options investigating fractal and electronic band gap methods of reducing antenna size while retaining adequate performance will be considered.3. Fabricate the highest performing modelled proximal and stand-off array designs.4. Demonstration of a functioning radar system, with the two antenna array variants as separate plug-ins. The UoM has recently invested in a 16 channel VNA that can be used for these tests. Deployment on to the vehicles should then be possible by utilising recent developments in commercial radar ICs - to achieve good signal-to-noise ratios while under the constraints of small size, light weight and low power. It is intended that the student will collaborate with the researcher awarded the related studentship on Signal Processing, and their combined effort would build an overall stronger output, however this proposal would produce very worthwhile results in itself.Note: Integration of the antenna arrays onto unmanned vehicles is outside the scope of the project. However, the antenna arrays will be designed to meet realistic weight, size, power requirements; with the algorithms designed to be suitable for mobile data processing.