A Microwave Reflectometer Prototype for Detection of Body Through the Rubble of Collapsed Buildings

There is a growing interest in using radio frequency in imaging for problem solving in situational awareness, surveillance, search and rescue operations, and screening for security. This has been fetched from recent development in addition to innovative technologies in microwave radar imaging applications. Despite the fact that no new phenomenology is exposed in this field, the prospects to eventually realize systems that operate under adverse weather conditions, interferences and obscuration has prompted newer prospects. However, the existing systems for RF imaging are not easy to afford and are not easily available and there is a need to make affordable imaging available to support people’s lives. The effort provided an economic, compact and easy solution for human body detection applications using Radio Frequency (RF) by designing and developing a microwave transceiver that can give data in a suitable form for further signal processing and data acquisition. In this project, different types of RF imaging techniques and the most feasible techniques that may be employed for under debris search and rescue operations were studied. Link budget analysis and software simulations were conducted. Individual components along with the transmitting and receiving chains were tested on VNA. Gain and radiation pattern of antennas was determined in anechoic chamber. During this project the performance of transceiver, regarding its detection ability, range resolution, signal to noise ratio (SNR) etc., were also investigated. At the end a prototype FMCW transceiver is given that is able to detect human body under debris or behind a walls whether living or dead, which is effective at transmitting as well as receiving the reflections and giving data in an audio format for further signal processing