UAV Based Microwave Tomography Imaging using Bistatic MIMO Ground Penetrating Radar

We propose a UAV based microwave tomography (MT) imaging, where a pair of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) carry Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) transmitter and receiver in a bistatic radar mode. The motivation for using MIMO radar instead of receive antenna array is to reduce the hardware cost, the receive antenna system size and weight to accommodate on a UAV, and to improve the Signal to Noise Ratio. We use the linear inverse scattering method to obtain the GPR B-scan image of the contrast from the measured electric field, based on multiple measurements above the examined subsurface. The B-scans obtained for each transmit-receive antenna pair are combined to obtain an improved image of the underground. To show the effectiveness of our method we use the transmission scattering parameters data obtained by simulating the MIMO radar by a computational electromagnetics software in a multiview bistatic scenario, where the subsurface contains a land mine. The use of MIMO radar for GPR imaging shows improved performance in the presence of noise, compared to imaging obtained by using single transmit and receive antennas.