Patent Application
20200249183
Embodiments of the present invention relate to a detector coil arrangement for man-portable NQR detection systems, and in particular to a detector coil arrangement arranged on a carrier to allow the coil to be passed through a physical medium.
BACKGROUND TO THE INVENTION AND PRIOR ART
There are 110 million active landmines in place in the world; 10 people a day are killed by landmine blasts, over 1 million have been killed or maimed since 1975 (cf www.findabetterway.org). There is a pressing need for new technologies to speed up the removal of landmines from the ground. Currently, having identified a mine-like object using metal detection or ground penetrating radar, the conventional approach for determining if this mine-like object is a mine is called “prodding and excavation”—sticking a metal stick in the ground to feel for the object then digging it up.
Example prior art documents illustrating the above approaches included U.S. Pat. No. 6,109,112, which relates to an acoustic landmine prodding instrument with force feedback, and U.S. Pat. No. 6,386,036, which also relates to a force feedback prodded. Another prodder design which makes use of piezoelectric material to measure force feedback was described by Baglio et al. The development of an intelligent manual prodder for material recognition, available before the priority date from http://www.fp7-tiramisu.eu/sites/fp7-tiramisu.eu/files/publications/IARP-8-BAGLIO.pdf. Finally, Baglio et al. also published a review paper which gives background on the present state of the art in prodding techniques, at http://www.fp7-tiramisu.eu/sites/fp7-tiramisu.eu/files/publications/IARP%2010%20-%20S.Baglio.pdf.
The limitations of the force feedback and ultrasonic approaches is that they are still only registering the fact that the object is physically like a mine; the LIBS approach does at least look for explosive, but as this is at a trace level, it can be confused by ground contamination, particular is there is water flow (i.e. the trace has been transferred to the object being examined from a mine somewhere else in the locality).
As a precursor to prodding, wide area mine detection is used in peacetime mine clearance operations to try and locate the vicinity of a mine, with prodding then being used to fix the location. Mine detection can be undertaken using NQR systems, mounted on trolleys, which can be wheeled over an area to be cleared. The AQUAREOS initiative undertaken by King's College London in combination with the mine clearance charity Find A Better Way aims to use trolley mounted NQR systems to speed up the process of mine detection and clearance. The primary elements of such a system are shown in
Nuclear Quadrupole Resonance (NQR), often referred to just as Quadrupole Resonance (QR), is a known RF detection modality for the remote direction of explosives materials. It is commercially employed already in airports and other public locations for explosives detection. The great advantage of QR is that it directly detects the chemical signature of the explosive content of the mine. As a radiofrequency technique, QR lends itself to remote sensing. However, as a near-field method (frequencies for nitrogen QR range from 0 -5.5 MHz) there is considerable signal attenuation with increasing separation between the sensor and the target (i.e. the deeper the mine, the weaker the returned signal). There is equally, a great deal of RF power attenuation for the same reason, meaning that considerable RF power is needed to “reach” buried mines. In combination with the already-weak QR response, these factors represent a considerable challenge for the implementation of QR as a remote sensor for confirming that a target is a buried mine. Essentially, in order to overcome these limitations high power signals must be transmitted, and/or large, high gain, transmit and detector coils used in order to detect the weak QR response. In the context of peaceful (i.e. non-military) mine clearance, it is these technical limitations that dictate the use of large, powerful, trolley mounted systems, such as those described above. Truly man-portable QR detection systems have, so far, not been possible because of the power requirements and size requirements of the transmit and detect coils.
Embodiments of the invention address the above issues by providing an arrangement where an RF transducer such as a small detection coil of an NQR system is mounted on the end of a carrier such as a prodder stick, and is then carried by the carrier into the very near vicinity of, and more particularly for example into contact with, a possible target explosive device. Because the detection coil is brought into contact with or into the very near vicinity of the target, the transmitted NQR signals, and the resultant QR response, can be much lower power, to the extent that such a system can be made fully man-portable, and also be much lower cost to manufacture. As a consequence, NQR explosive detections systems may be deployed in larger numbers than has heretofore been possible, thus increasing the certainty of, and hence safety, of landmine detection, and improving clearance rates.
In view of the above, from a first aspect there is provided an apparatus, comprising: an RF transducer for an NQR system; and an elongate carrier for the RF transducer; the transducer being arranged so as to be carried at or near a distal end of the elongate carrier.
In some embodiments the RF transducer is a coil antenna. This provides advantages in being able to wrap the coil antenna around the end of the elongate carrier.
The arrangement may be such that the elongate carrier is able to carry the coil so that coil and carrier are able in use to penetrate through a solid-type medium when in use. As such, the carrier is able to move the coil through a medium such as soil for landmine detection, or through other materials, such as clothes in a suitcase, for security applications in other areas. The carrier is therefore of elongated shape having a cross-sectional diameter much less than its length, to allow penetration of the carrier into and through a solid-type medium, or to allow penetration through openings of restricted size.
The elongate carrier may be substantially rigid along at least a greater part, or all, of its length. Alternatively, the elongate carrier may have one or more portions along its length of reduced rigidity to allow the carrier to be bent into a desired shape. In addition, the elongate carrier may have one or more portions along its length of adaptable rigidity, to allow the carrier to be bent into a desired shape. For example, the carrier may be such that it is formed or configured such that the stiffness of the carrier can be varied with respect to time, preferably at any point along its length. This allows one or more portions of the carrier to be rendered less stiff when they are desired to be bent into shape, and then rendered stiffer when they are desired to be kept in a particular position or configuration
The arrangement is particularly suitable for use with a nuclear quadrupole resonance (NQR) detector system, wherein the sensor coil is connected to the NQR detector system for use as an NQR detector coil. As is known in the art NQR systems are particularly suitable for explosives detection, and hence embodiments of the present invention can be particularly used for such, and in particular for landmine clearance operations.
In one embodiment the coil diameter is in the range of 5 mm to 25 mm, and more preferably 10 to 20 mm. Similarly, the elongate carrier may be of similar or slightly reduced dimensions, in term of its diameter, so that the coil can be wound therearound. In addition the coil length may be in the range of 5 mm to 30 mm, and more preferably in the range of 9 mm to 25 mm.
Similarly, when in use as part of an NQR system, the sensor coil generates a RF field strength in the range of 100 microTesla to 1 milliTesla, and/or operates at a peak power of 100 mW to 100 W.
From another aspect there is also provided a method of target material discrimination, comprising: providing an apparatus according to any of the preceding claims; inserting the apparatus into a medium towards a target so as to bring the sensor coil into contact with or the near vicinity of the target; and activating an NQR detection system of which the apparatus forms a part to undertake NQR based target material discrimination.
Also described from a further aspect is an NQR detector system having a detector coil mounted on the distal end of an elongate carrier to allow the coil to be brought into contact with a target to be discriminated, the NQR system being arranged in use to supply power to the detector coil, the peak RF power being supplied to the coil being less than 100 W, and the coil being arranged such that the resulting RF field strength generated by the coil is less than 1 mT.
Further features and advantages will be apparent from the appended claims.
Embodiments of the invention will now be described with reference to the accompanying drawings, wherein like reference numerals refer to like parts, and wherein:—
Embodiments of the present invention aim to provide an NQR detector system for explosives detection provided with a small detector coil that is placed in use into close proximity or against a target object to be tested. Because the detector coil is placed so close to the target, then the transmit power from the coil from the NQR detector system can be significantly lower than has been used in NQR landmine detection systems of the prior art. Due to this lower power the power supply and NQR sensor electronics can be made much smaller and more compact than has heretofore been the case, resulting in a lower cost, lower weight system that is truly man-portable. The small detector coil of embodiments of the invention is carried on a carrier so that it can be placed into contact with, or into the close vicinity of, the target to be sensed. The carrier may, in some embodiments, be a rigid member such as a prodder stick, or may be a carrier member whose rigidity can be adapted with respect to time, and/or at points along its length. For example, the coil may be carried on a controllable stiffness longitudinal member, such as a manipulator like the STIFF-FLOP manipulator, being developed under the EU funded STIFF-FLOP project, described at www.stiff-flop.eu.
More generally, whilst above and below we describe the use of a coil as the RF transducer for the sensor, in other embodiments other configurations may be used as RF antennae, for example a strip antenna having a flat piece of copper or PCB cut or bent into the appropriate shape and having its ends bridged with capacitors. Alternatively, the coil may be made from pipe rather than wire. Other arrangements of RF antenna that may be used in place of the described sensor coil will be apparent to the intended reader, it being understood that any suitable RF transducer such as an antenna of suitable size and frequency response may be used.
A first embodiment of the invention will now be described with respect to
With respect to the arrangement of the coil, a number of possible configurations are possible, mostly coils with both breadth and length that wrap around a bar or rod or hollow tube, which may have a circular cross-section, but not necessarily so; In addition “flat” coils e.g. a spiral that are attached to/embedded in the end of the bar or rod or tube may be used. The wires can run along inside the rod/bar/tube, or along the surface. The rod/bar/tube has to be non-conducting e.g. plastic. A thin jacket (« 1 mm), also non-conducting, is preferably formed on the outside to protect the wires.
In further embodiments combinations of the above arrangements may be possible. For example, the flat ended solenoid arrangement of
The principal physical dimension for such a coil to be useful for penetrating through a surrounding medium in order to be brought into contact with a target is the cross-sectional area (CSA). In terms of maximum diameter, for a circular CSA, around 20 mm is preferable. Most commercial mine prodders are 9 mm in diameter, and hence a range of, for example, 5-20 mm for the coil diameter is may be used successfully. With respect to the length of the coil (for the solenoid or conical arrangements), a length in the range of 9-25 mm is possible; the length should not be too long, as the coil volume should not be much bigger that the inspection volume, which is constrained by the CSA (i.e. the coil should not be much longer than it is broad). One example test coil used during development of embodiments of the invention is diameter=15 mm, length=25 mm, would as a substantially cylindrical coil; it could be shorter, but this coil works in terms of matching inductance/number of turns to desired frequency.
The number of turns of wire of the coil are decided by the desired frequency of operation—the lower the frequency, the more turns are desirable, within the constraints of the available space. Ideally as many turns as possible within the length and width constraints described above should be made appropriate to the inductance required to create a resonance at the frequency of interest.
With respect to the carrier 42, this can be as long as needed within the constraint that the receiver circuitry should be as close to the coil as possible to avoid unwanted signal loss in the wires. Carrier lengths in the ranges of 15 cm to 50 cm, or even as long as 1 m may be used. Other carrier lengths outside these ranges may also be used, depending on the application. With respect to carrier width, or cross-sectional area, this should be no greater than, and in embodiments where the coil is wrapped around the carrier, would be slightly less than, the diameter of the coil. Generally, the diameter of the carrier should be much less than its length. Diameters in the range of 4 to 19.5 mm may be typical, for coil diameters of 5 to 20 mm as discussed above. The ratio of carrier length to carrier diameter may be in the range of 10:1, to as high as 200:1, or even 400:1 (for example for a 0.5 cm diameter, with a 2 m length).
Moreover, with respect to properties of the carrier itself, this may be rigid along its length, or may have one or more portions of reduced rigidity, to allow the carrier to be bent into any necessary shape in order to allow it to more easily penetrate the medium into which it is to be inserted to be brought into contact with the target. For example, the carrier may have rigid portions separated by bendable portions. The bendable portions may be sufficiently stiff such that when bent into position they stay where they are bent; that is, the bending force required to bend the portions into a desired position is typically greater than that which would be encountered in use. Alternatively, the carrier may be formed of a material and/or have a configuration that allows it to be bent at any point along its length, in order to allow the carrier to be bent into almost any desired shape. In this respect, the bendable properties of the carrier are such that it may be repeatedly bent from one shape to another, without overly weakening.
In addition, in another embodiment the carrier may be such that it is formed or configured such that the stiffness of the carrier can be varied with respect to time, preferably at any point along its length. This allows one or more portions of the carrier to be rendered less stiff when they are desired to be bent into shape, and then rendered more stiff when they are desired to be kept in a particular position or configuration (whether bent or stiff). One known technology that can provide modulating stiffness properties in the form of an elongated carrier is the STIFF-FLOP technology being developed as a carrier for medical devices, and described at www.stiff-flop.eu. In particular, this technology can be readily adapted to provide a bendable and stiffness controllable carrier upon which an NQR sensing coil can be mounted on the end as described above.
In terms of electromagnetic (EM) performance, peak power need be no more than 100 W (peak power) with such little coils, and they are ideally used at even low powers—for example, good results have been obtained at no more that 25 W (peak power). These powers compare well with known remote sensing coils which are required to work at kilowatts. Please note: this is peak power; the average power is around 10 to 20% of this value, as the RF is applied in pulses with gaps in between to capture the signals (e.g. pulse duration 200 microseconds, followed by 1000 microseconds of signal acquisition before the next pulse etc.). So a typical operating range in terms of power requirements is of the order of 100 mW-100 W (peak power). In terms of RF field strength, the range is around 100 microTesla to around 1 milliTesla at target as desirable/achievable at these power levels with these size coils.
More generally, the operating principle behind the small coil is that the reduced distance to target when in use is used to compensate for the sub-optimal impedance mismatch between the target and the small coil. Generally in NQR systems the NQR coil is usually the same size as the target object; for example in an airport bag scanner the NQR coil would generally be the same size as a typical bag or suitcase being scanned. This is so the whole target is effectively energised by the coil, and resulting NQR signals can be obtained from anywhere in the target.
In the present arrangement the small coil is usually much smaller than the target (typically a landmine), and hence there is sub-optimal mutual inductance between the target and the coil with the result that only a portion of the target is energised and thus returns an NQR signal. However, in the context of landmine clearance this is not important, as the operating modality of bringing the coil into contact with the target effectively locates the target, and then all that is being required of the NQR system is to confirm that explosive material is present. Even though only a portion of the target is thus “scanned” by the coil for explosives, any such explosives in a landmine will be detected, and hence the discrimination between landmine and other objects (e.g. buried rock or stone) is then complete. That is, in order to determine that an object is a landmine that should be cleared, it is not necessary to confirm that there is explosives throughout the body of the object; it is instead sufficient to confirm that explosives are present in the smaller volume which can be effectively energised by the small coil mounted on the tip of the carrier.
As proof of concept we have constructed a prodder coil sensor according to embodiments of the invention as described above, and a typical conventional remote sensor coil to allow for direct comparison of performance. For ease of operation we first opted for 35CI QR at 34 MHz. This made it easier to bring the simple prodder sensor employed here to resonance than working at 14N frequencies (<5.5 MHz), but all conclusions regarding RF power/field and signal return would apply equally well at nitrogen frequencies. And subsequent to these early measurements a coil for operating at 14N frequencies was constructed and successfully tested, as described below.
The prodder sensor was a simple solenoid mounted on the end of a 15 mm diameter plastic rod. The comparison remote sensor was a simple two-turn loop wrapped around a 100 mm diameter plastic tube. These dimensions were chosen as they correspond to the target form factors and distances to target (“burial depths”) that would be encountered in humanitarian demining. The sample (1,4-dichlorobenzene) quantity was set to 70 grams for the same reason. Typical characteristics of target mines that were used in the Balkans during the 1990s (and which are still the subject of mine clearance operations) are shown in the table below.
agenerally buried up to a depth of 90-100 mm from surface to top of mine, but can settle deeper over time
First we measured the RF field generated by the two sensors at different distances from their “faces” for the same RF power supplied.
As a consequence, the dual advantages of the prodder—it is a small coil that is designed to operate in contact with the target—result in a greatly enhanced performance compared to the remote sensor (“loop”). In order to deliver the same RF field to the target, much, much more power (at least 16×) would need to be supplied to the remote sensor compared to that supplied to the prodder sensor. In fact, the equipment we had available would not be able to provide the amount of power required. Note: some of these field differences can be compensated for by applying the RF pulses for longer, but there is a limit to which this approach can be employed due to average power limits and RF bandwidth requirements (long pulses =narrow bandwidths−too narrow to capture the signal). A 16× difference in power requirement cannot therefore be overcome in this way.
If we turn now to the signals returned by the 70-gramme sample placed at different distances from the sensors (representing different burial depths), there is, at least in the initial experiment, some more positive news for the remote sensor, as the differences are much less pronounced.
In
So if we turn now to a comparison of the signal returned by the single-pulse versus the echo type of sequence shown in
In addition, it is also possible to construct a prodder-like coil such as those described above that can be used as part of a resonant circuit at Nitrogen-14 frequencies (0 -5.5 MHz)—the target for explosives detection. Repeating the last of the tests above, using multiple-pulse pulse sequences, such a prodder coil versus a unilateral spiral-like coil with a 120 g sample of NaNO2 (14N QR frequency 3.603 MHz), gives a result in
Various further modifications, whether by way of addition, deletion, or substitution may be made to the above mentioned embodiments to provide further embodiments, any and all of which are intended to be encompassed by the appended claims.
| Number | Date | Country | Kind |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1519818.7 | Nov 2015 | GB | national |
| Filing Document | Filing Date | Country | Kind |
|---|---|---|---|
| PCT/GB2016/053354 | 10/28/2016 | WO | 00 |
