Integrated ground penetrating radar and DGPS method for the continuous and long-distance GPR survey in the rugged terrain

The integrated ground penetrating radar (GPR) and global positioning system (GPS) survey has been extensively used to investigate the subsurface materials or buried-objects with the geographical information. However, when the GPR was pulled quickly, there was inadequate that the GPS signal receiver cannot real-time update its geographical coordinates by the serial com-port or USB port on the laptop. In this study, the integration of GPR and differential GPS (DGPS) was realized to acquire GPR image with the geographical information, especially for a continuous and long-distance GPR survey in the rugged terrain. When the operator with GPR system is moving on the ground surface, the pulse signals of the survey wheel were applied to trigger the GPR control unit and the GPS signal receiver at the same time. Meanwhile, the GPR data and the geographical coordinates were obtained by the GPR system and the GPS signal receiver, respectively. In addition, the time synchronization algorithm was proposed to combine each trace of the GPR image with the geographical coordinates of the GPS signal receiver. To evaluate the feasibility and efficiency of the integrated GPR and DGPS method, the 250 MHz and 500 MHz GPR profiles were performed in the four survey sites along the Litang fault. The difference between the pulse events on GPS and the GPR traces number, whether 250 MHz and 500 MHz GPR antenna, it indicates that the differences slightly increase when the distance increases on the graphs. The study results demonstrate that the integrated GPR and DGPS method has the capable of obtaining the GPR data with high-precision geographical information for a continuous and long-distance measurement in the rugged terrain. What’s more, the methodology that we introduce also offers the chance for comprehensive application of GPR data with other spatial data, such as the high-resolution remote sensing image, unmanned aerial vehicle, airborne LiDAR and so on.