Investigation of the underground structure elements of GSM towers with GPR and GSM signal effects in GPR data

GSM infrastructure in Turkey began to be established in the early 90s. In this context, Telsim GSM Company was founded in 1994 and began manufacturing GSM towers. Telsim GSM Company has been transferred to the Vodafone GSM Company in 2005. Some of the old tower was demolished in recent years and has occurred in some of the structural problems. In this context, especially GPR studies have been made to take information about the current status of the old towers. And studies are still continuing. First purpose of that study, determine the main foundation of the tower, current status of the main columns and upper concrete superficies and vertical rebar's of the columns. As a second purpose is to find and determine the GSM signal effects at the GPR data. And also which the different sizes and antenna capability of the GSM towers. The scope of these two purposes, we collected data from the under 22 different towers with three different brand GPR and different frequency GPR antennas (200MHz, 250MHz, 400MHz, 500MHz, 1000MHz, 1600MHz and 1700MHz). From now we collected 200 profiles data. This study is a part of an R & D project that, obtain to search the data quality, signal impact factors, new data collection techniques and ideal antenna frequencies under the GSM towers.