Evaluation of metal detection audio alert signals of AN/PSS-14 by means of real time visualization

The sweep arm of the AN/PSS-14 Landmine Detector attached to an independent visualization device will transform the AN/PSS-14 into a hand-held data acquisition system for conversion of real time MD and GPR audio alert signals into captured visual trace displays on an on-board PDA computer screen so that momentary sounds of millisecond durations can be captured and displayed for visual scrutiny and interpretation by analytical on-board data processing procedures. This is a part of a two-man team that is developing a visual data adapter for the AN/PSS-14 Landmine Detector where the current thesis is concentrating only on MD audio alerts. The visualization device displays the amplitude-time plot and the instantaneous frequency-time plots of the MD audio alert signal for better understanding and for distinction of metallic firing pins from metallic clutter. This is achieved by the identification of the metal type, which would be common in any given landmine field and by observing the symmetric deviations of the amplitude envelope along multiple sweep directions over a buried target. The analysis of this research is constrained to only vertical firing pins. Further, analyzing the frequencies of different types of firing pin (different metal types), it can be concluded that the frequency response of the AN/PSS-14 to metallic targets are specific to metals. This process is only applicable for single, isolated MD audio signals --Abstract, page iii