Wideband slotted antenna for microwave imaging system in ground penetrating radar applications

Abstract

Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) is one of the non-destructive methods which employ electromagnetic wave to map the buried features in the ground or man-made structures. Basically, GPR consist three main components which are antennas, control unit and display. In this paper, wideband slotted antenna for microwave imaging system in Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) applications is presented. The design of the proposed antenna is aided using Computer Simulation Technology (CST) 2014. Taconic substrate TLY-5 with dielectric constant of 2.2 and tangent loss of 0.0009 is employed in the design. The slotted antenna demonstrates operational bandwidth of 24% across 1.2 GHz to 1.86 GHz frequency range. The characteristic of the proposed antenna such as return loss, radiation pattern and gain for both simulated and measured result are observed. The wideband slotted antenna performs a good agreement between simulated and measured return loss and gives directional pattern. The antenna gain improved up to 9 dB after the reflector is located at the back of the antenna. The integration between wideband slotted antenna and sandy soil and buried metal object was performs. The scattering data for the simulation result was collected and microwave imaging technique was used to construct the images. The constructed image for the antenna and its integration with and without clutter removal is also presented in this paper.