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Design of Advanced GPR Equipment for Civil Engineering Applications

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Civil Engineering Applications of Ground Penetrating Radar

Abstract

This chapter describes the issues to be addressed in the design of Ground Penetrating Radar equipment dedicated to civil engineering applications. Radar is well known for its ability to detect aircraft, ships, vehicles, birds, rainstorms and other above-ground objects. It relies for its operation on the transmission of electro-magnetic energy, usually in the form of a pulse, and the detection of the small amount of energy that is reflected from the target. The round-trip transit time of the pulse and its reflection provide range information on the target. The application of radar in the detection of buried objects is quite old; there are details of such work dating back to 1910, with the first pulsed experiments reported in 1926 when the depths of rock strata were determined by time-of-flight methods. The design of effective Ground Penetrating Radars requires solutions to technical challenges in three major areas:

  • Radio Frequency system design.

  • Antenna design.

  • Data analysis.

Hence, this chapter reviews the commonly available GPR system architectures and summarises main design challenges to build an effective tool.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The data may be gathered either with a pulsed or a swept frequency GPR, in the latter case \(T\left( t \right)\) is meant as an equivalent trace in the “synthetic” time domain.

  2. 2.

    E.g. let us think of an unequally dense, or ‘patchy’ fog.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Georadar Division, IDS Ingegneria Dei Sistemi S.p.A., via Enrica Calabresi, 24-Loc. Montacchiello, 56121, Pisa, Italy

    Guido Manacorda

  2. Institute for Archaeological and Monumental Heritage IBAM-CNR via Monteroni, Campus Universitario, 73100, Lecce, Italy

    Raffaele Persico

  3. OSYS Technology Ltd., Ouseburn Building, Albion Row, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 1LL, UK

    Howard F. Scott

Authors
  1. Guido Manacorda
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  2. Raffaele Persico
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  3. Howard F. Scott
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Guido Manacorda .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Engineering, University Roma Tre, Rome, Italy

    Andrea Benedetto

  2. Department of Engineering, University Roma Tre, Rome, Italy

    Lara Pajewski

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Manacorda, G., Persico, R., Scott, H.F. (2015). Design of Advanced GPR Equipment for Civil Engineering Applications. In: Benedetto, A., Pajewski, L. (eds) Civil Engineering Applications of Ground Penetrating Radar. Springer Transactions in Civil and Environmental Engineering. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-04813-0_1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-04813-0_1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-04812-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-04813-0

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