Glacial Crevasse Radar

Team: Andrew Hendricks

Project

Detect glacial crevasses remotely

[Snider] Figure 1: Rescuing a mountaineer from a crevasse fall

[Snider]

Figure 1: Rescuing a mountaineer from a crevasse fall

  • Mountaineers often need to navigate glacial crevasses covered in snow
  • Ice-penetrating radar provides method to see into glaciers
  • GCR uses ice-penetrating radar to automate crevasse detection, giving user appropriate warning

Methods

  • Radio waves partially reflect from media interfaces
  • 70 cm (~440 MHz) radio wave penetrates ice and snow
  • Software-defined radio (SOR) generates and transmits a chirped radar pulse
  • The reflected wave is analyzed for reflections
  • Reflections are filtered by amplitude and distance to find crevasses
  • When a crevasse is detected, the GCR sounds an alarm
[Williams] Figure 2: Refiections from a crevasse relevant to a bistatic (receive and transmit are in different locations) radar. (GCR is a monostatic radar)

[Williams]

Figure 2: Refiections from a crevasse relevant to a bistatic (receive and transmit are in different locations) radar. (GCR is a monostatic radar)

System

Figure 3: GCR functional block diagram

Figure 3: GCR functional block diagram

Conclusion

Figure 4: Transmitted signal from an SDR as shown on a spectrum analyzer

Figure 4: Transmitted signal from an SDR as shown on a spectrum analyzer

Figure 5: Wi-Fi signal received on SDR, as shown on a waterfall plot

Figure 5: Wi-Fi signal received on SDR, as shown on a waterfall plot

  • The SDR both transmits and receives successfully
  • I learned SDR use, radio system architecture, and the virtues of different frequency-modulated continuous wave (FMCW) radar schemes
  • In the future, I would like to implement the processing on a microcontroller, include a distance indicator, and improve the GCR into a reliable tool for expeditions