GPR Acquisition Methods Comparison

This paper presents a study for subsurface object detection using different scanning acquisition paths. The air coupled system is considered, which can be easily attached to the unnamed aerial vehicle (UAV). The objective is to determine which acquisition scenario can acquire the largest area of interest. The SFCW radar can generate 200 samples within a frequency range of 500MHz – 2.5GHz with pulse repetition interval of 100ms. The TEM antennas are used for transmitting and receiving signals. The following configurations of air coupled GPR are presented: monostatic down-looking and side-looking configurations, bistatic configuration, where antennas were separated for 2 meters, circular configuration with platform rotating along its vertical axis and circular configuration with platform moving along trajectory. The experiments were conducted using a polygon of 3×3×0.5 meters with homogeneous clay structure. Experiments showed that bistatic and circular acquisitions can be used for scanning ground areas of interest between 1 and 1.5 meters, when platform is placed 0.75 m above surface.