The Frequency Modulated Continuum Wave is an educational cheap radar that can be use to track the distance and the speed of detected moving objects. Already used as a proximity sensor, if provided with specific antennas, it could be an useful tool for detecting buried objects, which can be particularly applied in case of natural disasters such as avalanches and earthquakes, to find living beings under the rubbles. This is normally known as a Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR). The functions of the radar can vary thanks to a programmed ARM Cortex-M3 based MBED LPC168 microcontroller, developed in Anaconda Spider Python 3.6 environment. Different functions such as the frequency variation of the chirp, the modulation form and the repetition intervals can be chosen through an interactive mask.
This project is a collaboration among the Laboratory of Electronics and Environment of DIET, Sapienza University of Rome and the Remote Sensing Laboratory Bauman Moscow State Technical University, as part of the European Program COST Action TU1208 Civil Engineering Applications of GPR. It has been presented in the COST Final Conference in Warsaw in September 2017, and the paper will be presented at the COMCAS Conference on November 13-15 in Tel Aviv, Israel.