UWB GPR for detection and identification of buried small objects

Abstract

Recently considerable efforts are put in development of Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) systems for detection and identification of the buried artifacts and structures. The GPR performance is associated with the properties of the local soil and buried targets as well as the implementation of its hardware and software. When the aim in conventional GPR systems is detection of objects, some applications require identification of objects. It is necessary a new generation of GPR hardware for the identification of objects. This new hardware should perform highly accurate measurements of the scattered field. In this paper, the development of GPR system for the identification of buried small objects is presented. System covers broad bandwidth more than 2 GHz in order to achieve sufficient down-range resolution. GPR is operated lower frequencies because of technological restrictions of pulse generator. The performance of GPR for buried object detection and identification depends significantly on the ability of the antenna to radiate impulses into the ground without distortion. GPR antennas are operated close to the ground for efficiently coupling the energy into the ground. However this causes antenna characteristics to change as the ground condition changes. This characteristics instability makes it difficult to reduce the antenna clutter in the post processing. A novel broad band GPR antenna was developed over a wide frequency range to improve the stability. This new design was improved from dielectric loaded horn antenna.