Effects of antenna-target polarization and target-medium dielectric contrast on GPR signal from non-metal pipes using FDTD simulation

Abstract

Ground penetrating radar (GPR) is widely used especially in subsurface pipes investigation and detection. The general practice is that the parallel antenna-targetpolarization is used for metalpipeGPR imaging and normal antenna-targetpolarization for non-metalpipe imaging. However, such practice does not always produce optimized results. The main reason is that the dielectriccontrast in a non-metalpipesGPR imaging play an important roles in generating a good GPRsignal. The research intends to highlight these issues by incorporating a finite-difference time domain (FDTD) simulation for several cases. The important observation is that antenna-targetpolarization as well as the dielectriccontrast are two important criteria in determining a good GPRsignal for non-metalpipes imaging.