A Study of Polarimetric UWB Ground Penetrating Radar Imaging

Abstract

Ground penetrating radar (GPR) is an emerging technology which belongs to the family of non-destructive testing (NDT) with wide range of applications. Measuring properties of sub-surface media and mapping underground utilities are the major area of applications of GPR. Imaging is a very important part of GPR signal processing to give clear and presentable output for media under investigation. Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) along with polarimetry have the potential to enhance the GPR imaging quality by applying their advanced signal processing features.
Polarization is a fundamental property of Electromagnetic (EM) waves. Use of polarimetry helps to obtain information related to wide range of sources and targets remotely. Initially polarimetry was used as contrast-enhancing tool for various applications, but presently it is used in object detection and target characterization applications.
In this work, first fundamentals of GPR systems has been studied in detail with two types of GPR models. The target response is calculated in terms of Green’s functions for these models, followed by a comparative analysis between them. Then, different migration and polarimetric decomposition techniques were studied and implemented for certain target conditions simulated in finite difference time domain (FDTD) numerical model.