Abstract-In this work, we present an inverse scattering approach to address the timely detection of damage and leakage from pipelines via multi-bistatic ground penetrating radar (GPR) surveys. The approach belongs to the class of linearized distorted wave models and explicitly accounts for the available knowledge on the investigated scenario in terms of pipe position and size. The inversion is regularized by studying the properties of the relevant linear operator in such a way to guarantee an early warning capability. The approach has been tested by means of synthetic data generated via a finite-difference timedomain forward solver capable of accurately and realistically modeling GPR experiments. The achieved results show that it is possible to detect the presence of leakage even in its first stages of development.
With the increasing computational power of modern personal computers, sophisticated modelling and inversion techniques are becoming popular tools for the interpretation of high‐resolution, fully three‐dimensional GPR surveys. In this paper, we present the latest results of ongoing practical research into the development of novel, integrated, finite‐difference time‐domain (FDTD) numerical modelling and linear tomographic inversion methods for the interpretation and analysis of near–surface, 3D GPR data. The proposed approach utilizes the Born approximation solution to the inverse‐scattering problem and a truncated singular value decomposition (TSVD) to create the final, inverted reconstructions. A three‐dimensional, full‐field, O(2,4) accurate FDTD modelling scheme is used to generate the numerical‐based Green’s functions and incident fields for the inversion. As such, accurate antenna sources (including the influence of shields) and near‐field air/ground interface effects are inherently included in the inversion formulation. The performance of this integrated method is evaluated via a simulated, 3D, forensic‐based, test‐case example (a 900 MHz survey over a clandestine human burial target) including coherent noise from near‐surface clutter. Although the example is simplistic, the results show that the scheme works well, despite some assumptions in the inversion methodology. As such, useful information can be gained on the true form, depth, location and spatial interrelationships of the buried features and, therefore, improved interpretations can be obtained in a three‐dimensional context.
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