Simulations of ground-penetrating radars over lossy and heterogeneous grounds

Abstract

The versatility of the three-dimensional (3-D) finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method to model arbitrarily inhomogeneous geometries is exploited to simulate realistic groundpenetrating radar (GPR) scenarios for the purpose of assisting the subsequent designs of high-performance GPR hardware and software. The buried targets are modeled by conducting and dielectric prisms and disks. The ground model is implemented as lossy with surface roughness, and containing numerous inhomogeneities of arbitrary permittivities, conductivities, sizes, and locations. The impact of such an inhomogeneous ground model on the GPR signal is demonstrated. A simple detection algorithm is introduced and used to process these GPR signals. In addition to the transmitting and receiving antennas, the GPR unit is modeled with conducting and absorbing shield walls, which are employed to reduce the direct coupling to the receiver. Perfectly matched layer absorbing boundary condition is used for both simulating the physical absorbers inside the FDTD computational domain and terminating the lossy and layered background medium at the borders

Full-Wave Modelling of Ground-Penetrating Radars: Antenna Mutual Coupling Phenomena and Sub-Surface Scattering Processes

“…In this way, as it can be noticed in Fig. 6, it has been found that the antenna return-loss parameter 11 S is not strongly affected by the buried target which, conversely, has a significant impact on the frequency behaviour of the coupling level between the radiating elements, due to the electromagnetic field interference processes occurring at the receiver end. …”

“…10). As outlined in [11], the rigorous analysis of the aforementioned subsurface scattering phenomena is very important in order to asses the suitability of detection and imaging algorithms for GPR applications in realistic scenarios.…”

Information Theoretic Criterion Based Clutter Reduction for Ground Penetrating Radar

“…GPR received data is composed of target, clutter and noise signals [4,5]. Detection of target(s) is a challenging task especially if the targets are buried close to the surface or have non-metallic characteristics (like antipersonnel mines).…”

Realistic Model of Dispersive Soils Using PLRC-FDTD With Applications to GPR Systems

“…A wide variety of media in nature such as water, soil, human tissues and plasma have frequency dependent properties when it interacts with electromagnetic waves. However, many papers in the literature [2][3][4][5] use the original FDTD algorithm for solving electromagnetic waves interaction with such materials regardless of its dispersive nature in GPR frequency range. In consequence, the obtained results are not accurate as they should be.…”