Ground penetrating radar modelling of rough underground interfaces

In many electromagnetic scattering problems, the Earth's surface as well as subsurface interfaces are often modeled as planar dielectric boundaries (Cui and Chew, 1999). However, this assumption is not always valid and roughness in the Earth's subsurface can potentially be a major source of variability in the obsewed GPR signals. In some applications where shallow targets have constitutive properties very close to those of the background medium clutter due to the rough interface may introduce severe constraints on target localization and identification. As a result the detection of a buried object under a rough subsurface interface, using ground penetrating radar (GPR) could become problematic.