Use of a Sub-Array Statistical Approach for the Detection of a Buried Object

A hybrid electromagnetic-statistic approach for the detection and localization of a buried perfectly-conducting circular cylinder is presented. We use the results of a Cylindrical Wave Approach (CWA) forward solver as input data for our detection procedure. We use a SAP (Sub-Array Processing) structure and apply several algorithms for the Direction of Arrival (DOA) estimation. By triangulating the found DOAs, a set of crossings, condensed around the object locations, is obtained. To process the crossing pattern, we developed a statistical model for the crossings distribution, and employ hypothesis testing procedures to identify a collection of small windows containing targets. By defining a suitable threshold from a desired false alarm rate, and dividing the region in small windows it is possible to ascribe each window to the ground or to the object.