Characterizing Rail Sweep with Radar Target Identification Using Matrix Pencil Method

This paper presents the radar target identification system for investigation of the characteristics of defective rail. The BS100A rails with various sweep angles are modeled by using CST microwave studio. A Gaussian pulse is transmitted to the defected rail to measure the time-domain response. A matrix pencil method (MPM) is used to extract poles including the damping factor and natural frequency from the late-time portion of the time-domain response. An estimation of the sweep angles of the defective rail using the 2nd-order polynomial curve fitting is analyzed. From these simulation results, the extracted poles can characterize subsoil with different electrical properties. From the simulation results, the extracted poles can characterize defective rails with different sweep angles. The final results confirm the superiority of the proposed system over the conventional one using visual inspection.