Influence of GNSS Receivers on GPR Results

Abstract

Even though satellite positioning has been used in ground penetrating radar (GPR) measurements for years, there are no studies ruling out the influence of modern satellite positioning receivers on the operation of GPR antennas. In order to rule out mutual influence between devices, a field study was carried out to determine the possible influence of a Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) receiver on the results obtained from GPR. To this end, several equipment combinations based on two receivers were compared. This was followed by a numerical analysis of selected samples from the recorded data sets. The following were calculated: average values of signal amplitudes, their standard deviations and the signal-to-noise ratio, coefficient of variation, and signal stability parameters. We also suggested using a modified standard deviation based on the properties of the reference signal. Based on the results, we concluded that there were rather significant changes between the data sets for various equipment combinations, which may indicate that a GNSS receiver affects GPR data in some way. However, the influence was not significant enough to result in the qualitative misinterpretation of data.