Gigahertz Radar for Treasure Hunting

[TallJim]

Perhaps this has been discussed elsewhere, but can extreem high frequency radar (gigahertz) (and of course, safely weak, short signals) be used to find coins and small objects near the surface, much like the coil devices we are familiar with? It would be nice to to actually "see" on a monitor what is just below the surface. The Navy has sucessfully experimented using with laser light and millimeter-wave through fog, but I don't think light will work through the ground. A short radar signal seems ideal (but probably expensive)...

[99thpercentile]

For the average treasure hunter this is probably too expensive and too complicated. There is a lot of research in using high frequency GPR to locate landmines, but the hardware and software is very expensive and the results in cluttered environments aren't great. There were several sessions on high frequency GPR and landmines at the IEEE conference in Orlando this year. A lot of PhDs with fancy hardware and statistical analysis, but not great results in cluttered environments. There is a pretty good helicopter mounted system, REMIDS I think, that can locate about 90% of surface mines, but that's probably out of the price range of most treasure hunters.