A review of current ground penetrating radar concepts

Ground penetrating radar concepts are reviewed, with particular attention given to the focused spot antenna. It is noted that an antenna array can be designed based on either the focused antenna or the uniform aperture (focused at infinity). A solid-state pulser can be placed at the terminals on each transmitting antenna and triggered so that the pulse from each element arrives at the desired target position at the same time. The receive array can be connected by means of a corporate harness to a single sampling system to reduce signal-to-noise and signal-to-clutter problems. This may introduce excessive ringing in the harness itself, since near-perfect matching is required. Alternatively, a sample-and-hold circuit could be placed at the terminals of each receive antenna and their output voltages combined. This has several advantages and can be used as long as the dynamic range of the sampler is adequate.<<ETX>>