Measurements and numerical simulations of the effects of inclination and height of a GPR antenna above ground

Abstract

Landmines and Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) are among the most dangerous weapons found in (former) conflict areas. Many of them have only minimal or even no metal built in making it difficult to detect such devices via conventional metal detectors. Thus, alternative methods such as Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) are deployed for this purpose. The field methodology of using GPR for the detection of buried objects generally includes varying degrees of inclination and height of the antenna in use. In this work, the influence of antenna inclination and height above ground is studied by using control studies with simple reflector geometries. The investigations shall provide more insights on the influence of these factors via measurements in controlled environments and numerical simulations. A comparison of the two is used to study the accuracy of numerical simulations of scenarios involving the detection of buried objects with GPR. The motivation hereby is the fact that gaining experimental data is generally very costly, time consuming and difficult to set up. Evaluations of the tested parameters showed the individual impact of each factor on the measured data. Height and inclination as well as exogenous factors, such as antenna orientation, subsurface structure and reflector geometry played a governing role influencing the measured data. The field measurements were successfully reproduced in numerical simulations. However, it is crucial to implement proper physical and geometrical parameters of the antenna, subsurface and reflector into the simulation environment to achieve realistic and reliable results. The findings of this thesis will be beneficial to implement more accurate numerical simulations in the future, which enables to study more complex, extensive and variable scenarios in a much faster, efficient and less costly manner.