ANALYSIS OF SOIL AND ENVIRONMENTAL PROCESSES ON HYPERSPECTRAL INFRARED SIGNATURES OF LANDMINES

Georgia Tech is in the second year of a Multi-University Research Initiative designed to study the impact of environmental processes on optical signatures. In particular, this program is conducting phenomenological studies on hyperspectral and polarimetric signatures of various target classes in the visible and infrared wavebands. Initial research studies have focused on landmines and the impact of various environmental factors and processes (e.g., subsurface processes) on the resultant spectral infrared signatures. A variety of approaches have been employed in this research to gain a better understanding of the impact of the environment on the spectral and polarimetric characteristics of soil and landmine signatures. These approaches include theoretical analyses, physics-based signature modeling, field measurements, and laboratory studies. We will present results from our research into the use of a physics-based, hyperspectral signature model as an analysis tool for landmine-related phenomenology studies. Results from these studies will be presented that underscore the importance of incorporating the subsurface processes into the signature analyses and the impact of these processes on detection algorithm development. The results of these analyses have been propagated to algorithm developers to permit the creation of more robust processing techniques based on these physical analyses and models.