The development of an advanced GPR system at the Univeristy of Houston

An advanced ground penetrating radar system is being developed at the University of Houston. The objective of this research is to study the possibility of improving GPR performance by improving hardware structure, data handling, signal processing, and data interpretations of GPR systems. The other goal of this work is to study ways to reduce the complexity of operating the GPR system, namely, parameter set up, field operation, and data processing and interpretation. A prototype GPR system is being designed and implemented in the Department of Electrical Engineering at the University of Houston. Based on the traditional GPR design, the new GPR hardware system features compact size, easier operation, with improved spatial resolution and penetration depth. Circuit modifications are made on the transmitter, sampling head, controller, and data transmission components. A smaller version of resistively loaded printed-circuit-antennas are used for transmitting and receiving probes. Fiber optic links and wireless links are used as data transmission channels. In the data storage and processing station, software has been developed to enhance the radar image. A complex cepstrum computation and the direct wave cancelation can be performed by using the built-in software, along with the standard windowing, filtering and displaying functions. An user friendly control software is developed based on Microsoft Windows and Visual Basic packages. Since the GPR system is still under development, only primary data will be shown. Data inversion is also attempted using a direct-timedomain inversion algorithm recently developed by the authors.