The Detection and Location of Buried Metallic and Nonmetallic Targets

We have developed a new ground penetrating radar (GPR) which exploits stepped frequency technology and uses innovative spatial and temporal signal processing techniques to produce detailed, three dimensional images of buried objects. The resulting images are a significant improvement of ver images produces by conventional GPR. Our new GPR uses a pair of transmit-receive antennas and stepped frequency pulses to measure the complex response of the ground our a wide frequency band. The GPR is moved over the volume of the interest and data is recorded across a focused processing is used to produce images. Spatial match filtering is used to further enhanced the images and reduces clutter. Examples of high quality volumetric images of buried pipes are included. In the PHase I portion of this research we would like to show that we have an operationally viable concept by demonstrating 1) focused synthetic aperture GPR can detect and spatially resolve buried mine-like metallic an nonmetallic object down to a depth of six inches, and 2) it is technologically feasible to package such a system in a operationally viable package and produce the required images with real time processing.