Quantitative inverse scattering analysis for ground penetrating radar imaging

<p>The inspection of underground scenarios is a challenging task required in several applications, from geophysical to archeological and civil areas. The ground penetrating radar (GPR) is a common tool that has been widely adopted to provide qualitative imaging of the underground scenario [1]. Recently, several approaches to process GPR data and retrieve quantitative images to characterize the inspected region have been developed [2-3]. Moreover, to compensate for the loss of information that usually happens in this scenario, GPR systems have been implemented not only in monostatic and bistatic configurations but also in multistatic settings [4].</p> <p>In this contribution, a quantitative inverse scattering approach is proposed to retrieve the distribution of the complex dielectric permittivity of a buried region, starting from scattering parameters collected through a multistatic GPR configuration. The approach is based on a finite-element (FE) formulation of the electromagnetic inverse scattering problem and, as solving procedure, a reconstruction method in variable exponent Lebesgue spaces is adopted [5]. On the one hand, the FE model embedded in the method is exploited to describe the structure of the measurement configuration without simplifying assumptions (except for the two-dimensional hypotheses and the numerical discretization of the problem). On the other hand, the inversion procedure in variable exponent Lebesgue spaces has been found quite effective to face the ill-posedness and nonlinearity of the problem. A numerical validation of this approach is reported.</p> <p>&#160;</p> <p><strong>References</strong></p> <p>[1] R. Persico, &#8220;Introduction to ground penetrating radar: Inverse scattering and data processing.&#8221; Hoboken, New Jersey: Wiley, 2014.</p> <p>[2] M. Pastorino and A. Randazzo, &#8220;Microwave imaging methods and applications.&#8221; Boston, MA: Artech House, 2018.</p> <p>[3] V. Schenone, A. Fedeli, C. Estatico, M. Pastorino, and A. Randazzo, &#8220;Experimental assessment of a novel hybrid scheme for quantitative GPR imaging&#8221;, IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters, vol. 19, pp. 1&#8211;5, 2022.</p> <p>[4] M. Ambrosanio, M. T. Bevacqua, T. Isernia, and V. Pascazio, &#8220;Performance analysis of tomographic methods against experimental contactless multistatic ground penetrating radar&#8221;, IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing, vol. 14, pp. 1171&#8211;1183, 2021.</p> <p>[5] V. Schenone, C. Estatico, G. L. Gragnani, M. Pastorino, A. Randazzo, and A. Fedeli, &#8220;Microwave-based subsurface characterization through a combined finite element and variable exponent spaces technique&#8221;, Sensors, vol. 23, no. 1, p. 167, 2023.</p>