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Suppressing GPR Clutter from Randomly Rough Ground Surfaces to Enhance Nonmetallic Mine Detection

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Abstract

This study attempts to quantify the ground penetrating radar rough ground surface clutter by numerical modeling of wave scattering, and establish a strategy to suppress the clutter for given test signals. The goal is to improve the GPR detection statistics for small, buried, low-contrast nonmetallic antipersonnel mines. Using a model of an experimentally measured impulse GPR signal, we simulate the ground surface and buried low-contrast mine target scattered responses. We employ a 2D finite difference time domain (FDTD) method to analyze the pulse shape, delay, and amplitude characteristics of the scattered waves—with and without buried nonmetallic mine targets—as a function of roughness parameters. Five hundred Monte Carlo simulations of various test cases of specified ground root mean square height and correlation length were run to generate statistics for the clutter and target signal variations. In addition, the effectiveness of identifying and removing the ground surface clutter signal for detecting subsurface targets is presented. Results indicate that even with moderate roughness, statistics can be generated to enhance the detection of small, shallow, low-contrast targets.

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Correspondence to Carey Rappaport.

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Rappaport, C., El-Shenawee, M. & Zhan, H. Suppressing GPR Clutter from Randomly Rough Ground Surfaces to Enhance Nonmetallic Mine Detection. Subsurface Sensing Technologies and Applications 4, 311–326 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1026352615393

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1026352615393

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