Efficient modeling of electromagnetic characteristics of soil for FDTD ground penetrating radar simulation

For particular frequency ranges, electromagnetic waves are suitable for detecting buried objects. Ground penetrating radar (GPR) is an important tool for determining the locations of land mines, unexploded ordnance, improperly buried waste, or large obstacles which may impact excavation operations. It is useful to understand the effects of the soil surrounding scattering targets, by numerically simulating in the time domain the propagation, interaction, and scattering of EM waves by buried two-dimensional model objects such as pipes, cables, rocks, drums, and layers of aqueous waste. We derive functional dependencies for /spl epsi/ and /spl sigma/ and develop a simple but accurate time-domain model of soil.