Recent work in context-dependent processing for buried threat detection has revealed the potential of exploiting correlated environmental parameters in ground-penetrating radar (GPR) imaging, detection and discrimination, as well as data fusion approaches. In order to fully understand the physical phenomenology and develop performance predictions, we need to correlate measurable environmental parameters to GPR performance. We focus on hydro-meteorological and hydrogeologic properties such as temperature, humidity, soil water matric potential, soil water content, and sediment density and texture to understand the hydrogeophysical relationships and methods to incorporate them into optimal experimental design and data processing. Varying levels of data and information quality are assessed to quantify the sensitivity of GPR acquisition and processing methods to environmental contextual information. Both numerical modeling and experimental data collection are used to evaluate soil water controls on three-dimensional electromagnetic wave propagation. We present the analysis of experimental data collected in a new instrumented test bed facility constructed for assessing various configurations of air- or ground-coupled GPR systems. We assess factors such volume integration scale, measurement scaling and accuracy of the various hydro-electromagnetic sensing methods in terms of understanding multi-static radar angular illumination and imaging performance.

Date Published: 10 May 2019
PDF: 8 pages
Proc. SPIE 11012, Detection and Sensing of Mines, Explosive Objects, and Obscured Targets XXIV, 110120J (10 May 2019); doi: 10.1117/12.2519196

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 11012:
Detection and Sensing of Mines, Explosive Objects, and Obscured Targets XXIV
Steven S. Bishop; Jason C. Isaacs, Editor(s)