Antenna characteristics and air-ground interface de-embedding methods for stepped-frequency ground-penetrating radar measurements

The result form field-tests using a Stepped-Frequency Ground Penetrating Radar (SF-GPR) and promising antenna and air- ground deembedding methods for a SF-GPR is presented. A monostatic S-band rectangular waveguide antenna was used in the field-tests. The advantages of the SF-GPR, e.g., amplitude and phase information in the SF-GPR signal, is used to deembed the characteristics of the antenna. We propose a new air-to-ground interface deembedding technique based on Principal Component Analysis which enables enhancement of the SF-GPR signal from buried objects, e.g., anti-personal landmines. The methods are successfully evaluate on field-test data obtained from measurements on a large-scale in-door test field.