Tomographic imaging of a ground surface using radio ground waves

Abstract

In this paper, the theory of ground wave propagation is applied to the imaging of ground surfaces. The image of a surface is obtained by finding the distribution of surface impedance on the surface from the measured scattered field. A solution is obtained in an iterative manner using the error minimisation technique and steepest decent search method. Numerical simulation results obtained using the technique for the imaging of a wet surface with icy patches, and a forest covered surface with a hidden object are presented. The effect of noise on the image reconstruction is also simulated. It is shown that the images of the ground surface can be well reconstructed using the technique.