GPR signal enhancement using sliding-window space-frequency matrices

Abstract

Ground penetrating radar (GPR) has shown to provide useful results for detection of buried objects. However, its performance su®ers from strong re°ection from ground surface especially for shallowly buried targets. In such cases, the detection problem depends on the separation of the target signal from the ground backscatter such as landmines and unexploded ordnances. In this paper, we discuss and analyze the use of space-frequency time-reversal matrices for the enhancement of ground penetrating radar signals and potential clutter reduction. Through the use of sliding windows, submatrices from a given B-scan (radargram) are utilized to extract localized scattering information of a given detection scenario. Each sub-B-scan is decomposed to its singular vectors and later used to render synthetic aperture time-domain singular vector distributions corresponding to different scattering mechanisms. Later, they are weighted by the singular values and subtracted from the full B-scan to achieve reduced clutter and enhanced target response. The method shows satisfactory results for shallowly buried dielectric targets even in the presence of rough surface profiles.