ISBN 978-3-8439-0857-3

978-3-8439-0857-3, Reihe Messtechnik

Berthold Panzner
Synthetic Aperture Radar Focusing Techniques for Subsurface Radar Imaging

172 Seiten, Dissertation Otto-von-Guericke-Universität Magdeburg (2012), Softcover, A5

Zusammenfassung / Abstract

The detection and identification of subsurface objects using micro-wave imaging methods has gained wide interest and led to a variety of applications in civil engineering in recent years. This thesis investigates synthetic aperture radar techniques for resolution enhancement in subsurface radar. The development of appropriate techniques for imaging of visually obscured objects is central part of the presented work. The enhancement of the spatial resolution is addressed by the implementation of an exact focusing method applied on the radar raw data. The results are evaluated systematically in a completely automatized GPR environment that allows to collect data from a real GPR scenario. The GPR surveys are conducted by different GPR prototypes that have been developed in the context of this thesis. The developed GPR systems are laboratory frequency domain GPR setups based on an instrumentation setup and also mobile GPR setups utilizing impulse radar.

The thesis covers all relevant aspects of the microwave imaging system for the detection and identification of subsurface objects. The implementation of a 3D field simulation of the complete GPR environment facilitates to study the fundamental principles that governs the wave propagation of GPR. A systematic meteorologically investigation on the dielectric material parameters reveals a numerically robust concept for the determination of the soil properties. The novel synthetic aperture focusing approach developed in this thesis allows the high resolution visualization of small subsurface objects and expand the capability of remote sensing applications.