Silicon micromachined accelerometers for the detection of compliant anti-personnel landmines

Acoustic methods have been recently investigated for the detection of shallow landmines. Some plastic landmines have a compliant case which can made to vibrate by an airborne excitation like a loudspeaker. Our study is based on the possibility to detect landmines by contact or non-contact sensors like accelerometers or phonometers. Phonometers can provide sufficient seismic sensitivity but their response is influenced by direct acoustic wave coupling from the driving source. On the contrary accelerometers are much less influenced by the direct acoustic wave coupling and they have high sensitivity to acquire soil surface vibrations. In our experiments we can measure typical accelerations in order of 2 m/s² with sensitivity of 800 mV/g. The acceleration signal elaboration and visualization developed in this work demonstrates the suitability of these sensors for acoustic landmine detection study and allows a fast analysis to evaluate the presence of a buried landmine.