Effects of GPR antenna configuration on subpavement drain detection based on the frequency-shift phenomenon

Abstract

The water and clay content of subsurface soil can significantly influence the detection results obtained from ground penetrating radar (GPR). Due to the variation of the material properties underground, the center frequency of transmitted GPR signals shifts to a lower range as wave attenuation increases. Examination of wave propagation in the subsurface employing an attenuation filter based on a linear system model shows that received GPR signals will be shifted to lower frequencies than those originally transmitted. The amount of the shift is controlled by a wave attenuation factor, which is determined by the dielectric constant, electric conductivity, and magnetic susceptibility of the transmitted medium. This paper introduces a receiver-transmitter-receiver dual-frequency configuration for GPR that employs two operational frequencies for a given test - one higher and one slightly lower - to take advantage of this phenomenon to improve subpavement drain detection results. In this configuration, the original signal is transmitted from the higher frequency transmitter. After traveling through underground materials, the signal is received by two receivers with different frequencies. One of the receivers has the same higher center frequency as the transmitter, and the other receiver has a lower center frequency. This configuration can be expressed as Rx(low-frequency)-Tx(high-frequency)-Rx(high-frequency) and was applied in both laboratory experiments and field tests. Results are analyzed in the frequency domain to evaluate and compare the properties of the signal obtained by both receivers. The laboratory experiment used the configuration of Rx(400MHz)-Tx(900MHz)-Rx(900MHz). The field tests, in addition to the configuration used in the lab tests, employed another configuration of Rx(270MHz)-Tx(400MHz)-Rx(400MHz) to obtain more information about this phenomenon. Both lab and field test results illustrate the frequency-shift phenomenon described by theoretical calculations. Based on the power spectrum for each signal, the signal received by the lower frequency antenna typically received more energy (higher density values) at its peak frequency than the energy received by the higher frequency antenna.