A novel wall parameter estimation approach based on transmission line method from through-wall radar measurements

Abstract

A novel technique for estimation of the wall’s relative permittivity, thickness and conductivity from signals measured from the through-wall radar is presented in this paper. The retrieval process is built around an electromagnetic circuit model that represents the wall structure as a transmission line segment. The propagation of the radar signal through the wall is equivalently described as a pair of voltage and current waves that propagate along the transmission line, using analogies between the electrical parameters of the transmission line segment and the constituent parameters of the materials of the wall structure. The synthetic time domain signal obtained analytically and the real through wall imaging time domain signal were correlated to estimate the wall parameters of the layers that comprise the wall structure. The effectiveness of the proposed estimation technique has been demonstrated through simulation and experimentation on two actual building walls. A comparison with conventional methods revealed consistent results between the estimated wall parameters using the proposed technique and those obtained through traditional approaches. These findings highlight the potential of the proposed method in enhancing the accuracy of real-time target localization and tracking in through-wall imaging applications.