Ground penetrating radar imaging of buried metallic objects

During the past decade there has been considerable research on ground penetrating radar (GPR) tomography for detecting objects such as pipes, cables, mines and barrels buried under the surface of the Earth. While the earlier researches were all based on the assumption of a homogeneous background for simplicity, the planar air-soil interface has also been taken into account in two recently developed algorithms (see Hansen, T.B. and Meincke Johansen, P., IEEE Trans. Geosci. Remote Sensing, vol.38, no.1, 2000; Meincke, P., IEEE AP-S International Symposium, 2001). We address a general formulation for GPR imaging of buried 3D metallic objects within the physical optics (PO) approximation which also highlights the analytical background behind the success of methods employed by Hansen and Meincke Johansen and Meincke in identifying high contrast scatterers.