A microwave tomographic approach for contactless Multiple Input Multiple Output GPR systems

Nowadays, Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) systems working in contactless way deserve huge attention because, if mounted onboard of moving platforms like terrestrial and aerial vehicles, they allow the collection of a large amount of data, while keeping low complexity and time of the measurement step [1,2]. At the same time, multiple input multiple output (MIMO) GPR systems are worth being exploited because, being capable of gathering multiview and multistatic data, they allow an improvement of the reconstruction capabilities [3, 4]. However, the effective use of a contactless MIMO GPR requires the availability of properly designed data processing strategies able to manage the information acquired by this kind of systems and to provide an accurate reconstruction of the scenario under test.

This contribute proposes a microwave tomographic approach, which faces the GPR imaging as a linear inverse scattering problem and it is suitable to process contactless multi-view and multi-static data. The approach is referred to the 2D scalar case, exploits a ray-based model of the scattering phenomenon, and accounts for the presence of the air-soil interface. Specifically, the approach extends to the case of MIMO systems the concept of the Interface Reflection Point (IPR) previously exploited to process contactless data gathered by means of a multi-monostatic GPR [2,5].

At the conference, the approach formulation will be described in detail and results referred to virtual experiments will be provided in order to state the achievable imaging capabilities.

[1] Miccinesi, L., Beni, A., & Pieraccini, M. (2022). UAS-Borne Radar for Remote Sensing: A Review. Electronics, 11(20), 3324.

[2] Catapano, G. Gennarelli, G. Ludeno, C. Noviello, G. Esposito, and F. Soldovieri, "Contactless ground penetrating radar imaging: state of the art, challenges, and microwave tomography-based data processing," IEEE Geosci. Rem. Sens. Mag., vol. 10, no. 1, pp. 251-273, 2022.

[3] García-Fernández, M., López, Y. Á., & Andrés, F. L. H. (2020). Airborne multi-channel ground penetrating radar for improvised explosive devices and landmine detection. IEEE Access, 8, 165927-165943.

[4] Leone, G., & Soldovieri, F. (2003). Analysis of the distorted Born approximation for subsurface reconstruction: Truncation and uncertainties effects. IEEE Transactions on geoscience and remote sensing, 41(1), 66-74.

[5] Catapano, L. Crocco, Y. Krellmann, G. Triltzsch, and F. Soldovieri, “Tomographic airborne ground penetrating radar imaging: achievable spatial resolution and on-field assessment,”, ISPRS J. Photogram. Remote Sens., vol. 92, pp. 69–78, June 2014.