Ground Penetrating

Radar
(Ref: Jol.,H., 2009, Ground Penetrating Radar:
Theory & Applications, Elsevier, Amsterdam)

Zulkarnaini Mat Amin, Phd.

Department of Geoinformation
Fac. Geoinformation & Real Estate
 Contents
 Introduction.
 History.
 Principle.
 Instrumentation.
 Resolution.
 Data Processing
 Introduction
 RADAR → Radio Detection and Ranging
› Detect target in free space.
› Determine the range.
 Applications
› Probing into soil to detect pipelines and tanks
(Geomatics).
› Cavities (Engineering).
› Thickness determination (Engineering).
› Locating reinforcement (Engineering).
› Identifying deterioration (Engineering).

3
Applications of GPR
Centre Frequency (MHz) Depth of Penetration(m) Typical Applications

1600 0.5 Concrete Evaluation

Concrete Evaluation,
900 1
Void Detection
Utility, Engineering,
400 4 Environmental, Void
Detection
Utility, Engineering,
270 6
Geotechnical
Geotechnical,
200 7 Engineering,
Environmental
Geotechnical,
100 20 Environmental, Mining

16 - 80 35 - 50 Geotechnical

4
 Introduction
 GroundPenetrating Radar
/Ground Probing Radar /
Georadar.

A GPR system uses radio waves

in the frequency range 10 -2,000
MHz to investigate the shallow
subsurface.
 History
 1920s: rudimentary GPR, applications such
as ice thickness.
 Air radar used in WWII for aircraft.
 1950s,60s: ice thickness, geological
applications.
 1972: NASA Apollo 17 on moon, carrying
GPR.
 1980s: engineering applications, concrete
assessment, void detection, land mine
detection

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 Principle
 An EM pulse is sent through an
antenna, penetrating into the
surveyed material.
 EM wave will be
backscattered on any
electrical parameter contrast
in the ground, i.e. the
permittivity  , the permeability
 or the conductivity . In
practice it will be primarily the
contrast in permittivity, which
leads to a reflection of the
radiated EM wave
 A portion of the energy is
reflected back to the antenna
when an interface between
materials of dissimilar dielectric
constants is encountered.
http://www.cait.rutgers.edu/finalreports/GPR-RU4474.pdf
Principle

 Standard ground penetrating radar systems consist of a

transmitting and a receiving antenna.
 GPR operates with free waves. The travel time of the
wavelet which is recorded by the receiving antenna
depends on the path along which the wavelet propagates
and the dielectric properties of the materials.

http://www.cait.rutgers.edu/finalreports/GPR-RU4474.pdf
 Principle
 The first wavelet which is detected by the
receiving antennas the so-called „air wave‟
which propagates through the air between
both antennas with the vacuum speed of light.
 The second wavelet which reaches the receiver
is the so-called ground wave. It propagates also
directly between the transmitter and the
receiver along the air-soil interface and can be
applied to infer the near-surface soil moisture
content.
 Air- and ground wave are also known as „direct
waves‟ which always occur, independent of soil
structure.

http://www.cait.rutgers.edu/finalreports/GPR-RU4474.pdf
 Principle

• Travel paths of different GPR wave types in a two-layer soil with different
• relative permittivities.
• The signals of the various emitted wavelets reach the receiving antenna at
diferent times.Plotting the recorded amplitudes as a function of time results in a
so-called „trace‟. Radargram represents a series of traces.
http://www.cait.rutgers.edu/finalreports/GPR-RU4474.pdf
Principle

Functional Principle of GPR

http://www.cait.rutgers.edu/finalreports/GPR-RU4474.pdf
 Principle
 The reflected signal  The thickness of a layer is
has information on: given by:
› how quickly the signal Ct i
traveled di 
› how much was 2  r ,i
attenuated
where di is the thickness
 These quantities
of layer i, ti the total
depend on spatial
travel time through that
configuration and layer, C is the speed of
materials light and εr,i the dielectric
constant of the layer

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 Principle
 The amount of reflected energy at an
interface is governed by:

 r1   r 2
1, 2 
 r1   r 2

where ρ1,2 is the reflection coefficient and εr1

and εr2 are the dielectric constants.
 Principle
 Reflection strength
 Instrumentation
 The typical instrumentation for GPR
includes the following:
› Antenna
 Air-couple
 Ground-coupled
› Control Unit
› Display device
› Storage device

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Instrumentation

http://www.cait.rutgers.edu/finalreports/GPR-RU4474.pdf http://georadar.ids-spa.it/images/new/gpr_products/antennas.gif
 Antennas
• Identified by centre frequency in MHz
• Higher frequency = greater vertical resolution
• Lower frequency = greater penetration depth
• Typical penetration depths
100Mhz 4-25m
300Mhz 1-10m
400Mhz .5-4m
500Mhz .5-3.5m
900Mhz 0-1m

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 Antennas
Frequency (Mhz) Size (m) Spatial Resolution Length (m)

25 4 1

50 2 0.5 better

100 1 0.25

200 0.5 0.125

250 0.3 0.1

500 0.15 0.05

1000 0.08 0.02

The resolution is defined as the ability to distinguish between two close

signals obtained during the GPR mapping.

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Antennas
Vertical Resolution
C
Tm 

4f.  
Tm: minimum thickness resolved.
C: speed of light in a vacuum (3 X 108 m/s).
f: center frequency of antenna.
ε: RDP.

Example: For 400 Mhz antenna and RDP of 10,

the minimum thickness is about 6 cm.

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Antennas
Horizontal Resolution

D
A 
4  1
• A = long dimension radius of footprint.
• λ = center frequency wavelength of
antenna.
• D = depth.
• ε = RDP.
Example: For 400 Mhz antenna, a depth of 50 cm, and a RDP of 10,
A is about 21 cm. Therefore the footprint is approximately 42 cm on
the front to back axis and 28 cm on the side to side axis.

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Antennas

Vertical and Horizontal Resolution

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 Measurement Configurations
(Antenna Arrangement)
 Common offset
Transmitter and receiver antennas are moved
along the survey track while the distance
between both antennas is kept constant
throughout the whole survey. Electro-
magnetic pulses are emitted at equidistant
intervals which are controlled by the survey
wheel. With this measurement technique one
can efficiently and fast obtain information.
about the near-surface underground structure.
 Measurement Configurations
 Common mid-point
Transmitter and receiver are moved away
from each other in equidistant steps. At
each position a trace is measured. This
way, the reflected signal can be measured
using a number of different angles. The
resulting radar gram displays the travel time
as a function of the antenna separation.
Measurement Configurations
 Measurement Configurations
 Multi-channel
Combines the traditional CO and CMP
measurement techniques. In this setup at
least two standard GPR units, each
consisting of a transmitting and a receiving
antenna are coupled in a row at a fixed
distance and are moved along the survey
track. The multi-channel unit is able to
acquire data from all available transmitter-
receiver combinations.
Measurement Configurations
 Design Parameter
 Certain parameter can be set as a
function of application.
 It is important to understand the influence
of the parameters on the data and the
acquisition time as they can generally be
set by the user.
 Among the important parameter is
frequency range.
 Frequency Range
 The choice of the central frequency and of
the bandwidth of the GPR is an important
issue, and depends primarily on the type of
application.
 The parameters influencing the frequency
range are: the size of the object, the wanted
depth resolution, the maximal penetration
depth, and the properties of the soil.
 Good depth resolution, short pulses are
needed, which means larger bandwidth.
 Depth Resolution

 The penetration depth (δ) of a GPR wave in a

material is the distance traveled by the wave
in the material before the wave‟s amplitude
decays to 37% of its original magnitude.

 δ is inversely proportional to:

The material conductivity (σ)
The material dielectric constant (K)
The antenna frequency (f)
Depth Resolution

Depth resolution versus central frequency for sandy dry

and wet soil
Depth Resolution

Tradeoff between penetration and resolution

(Lecture 2)
 Depth Penetration
 Calculating the propagation velocity is usually
performed by burying a reflector at a known depth and
determining the velocity using the following formula:
2𝑑
 𝑉𝑚 =
𝑇
 Where:
› d = measured depth to reflecting interface.
› T = elapsed time between transmitted and received
pulse (nanoseconds).
› Vm = effective propagation velocity
(feet/nanosecond)

 If propagation velocities are known, depths can be

estimated using the following formula:
𝑇. 𝑉𝑚
𝑑=
2

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 GPR Data
 The data recorded by a GPR are generally
represented in the form of:
› 1D
› 2D
› 3D
 Denominated by the acoustic terminology :
› A-scans
› B-scans
› C-scans

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 A-Scan
• A single waveform b(xi , yj , t) recorded by a GPR, with the
antennas at a given fixed position (xi , yj)
• The only variable is the time, which is related to the depth
by the propagation velocity of the EM waves in the
medium.

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 B-Scan
• When moving the GPR antennas on a line along the x-axis, one
can gather a set of A-scans, which form a two dimensional
data set b(x, yj ,t) , called a B-scan.
• When the amplitude of the received signal is represented by a
colour scale (or grey-scale), as a 2D image.
• The 2D image represents a vertical slice in the ground.
• The time axis or the related depth axis is usually pointed
downwards.

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 Delay time

Antenna

36
 B SCAN
Antenna

Position
Delay

37
CROSS SECTION
OF THE SUBSOIL

RADARGRAM

Depth [m]
Time [ns]

Length [m]

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C-Scan
 When collecting multiple parallel B-scans or
when moving the antenna over a (regular) grid
in the xy-plane, a three dimensional data set b(x,
y,t) can be recorded, called a C-scan.
 Usually a C-scan is represented as a two
dimensional image by plotting the amplitudes of
the recorded data at a given time ti .
 The image b (x , y, ti) represents then a horizontal
slice at a certain depth, parallel to the recording
plane.

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Multiple parallel B-scans forming Representation of a C-scan by
a C-scan horizontal slices at different depths

40
GPR Data

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 GPR Processing
Purposes:
 To reduce the clutter. backscattered signals
that are not from possible targets, but occur
in the same time window and have similar
spectral characteristics. E.g. air-ground
interface.
 To enhance the quality of the images, so
that the interpretation by a human
operator becomes easier and more
correct.

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 GPR Processing
 Digital signal processing
Filter design
Deconvolution
 Seismic data processing
Velocity analysis
Migration
Static corrections

43
 GPR Processing

Signal Time Zero

Dewow Topographic Gain
Raw Data Saturation Correction Filtering Migration
Filtering Correction Recovery
Corrections

44
 Signal saturation
 Incoherent, noisy or missed traces require editing out and/or
filtering to improve the visual nature of the section.
 Saturation can produced a time-delayed, high frequency
„pulse‟.
 Desaturation function or “amplified signal” attempts to
correct.

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Desaturation function

46
 Dewow Filtering
 Low frequency energy caused the base level
of the received signal to bow up or down,
and this effect is known as baseline „wow‟
 Dewow : to remove of the initial DC signal
component or DC bias and decay of “wow”
or low frequency signal trend.
 Simply high pass filtering to remove low
frequency components from the data
associated with inductive phenomenon or
instrumentations dynamic range limitations.

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Dewow filter correction

48
 Topographic correction
 Topographic correction is an essential
component of GPR data editing, especially in
cases where there is significant topographic
variation in order to „position‟ the data in its
correct spatial context .
 Compensation for topography is often important
due to the shallow exploration depth of GPR.

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Time-zero variations

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 Filtering
 Temporal filters alter the shape of single traces in the vertical
(time) direction to eliminate noise at frequencies either
higher or lower than the main GPR signal bandwidth that
make the GPR section visually better.

51
 Gain Recovery
 Due the geometry spreading of transmitted wave
fields, later arrival on signal trace show noticeably
lower amplitudes than earlier arrival.

 To recover relative amplitude information, a time-

variant, trace equalization function such as spherical
divergence or automatic gain control is applied.

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Auto gain control

Effect of gain control

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 Migration
 In most case, reflection and diffraction signatures of GPR
section do not occur at the true position of the reflector.
 Migration is used to trace back the reflection and
diffraction energy to their source so that better
approximations of the reflectors position are indicated.

54
Thank you…