GPR ESTIMATION OF THE GEOMETRICAL FEATURESOF BURIED METALLIC TARGETS IN TESTING CONDI-TIONS

The capability of Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) systems of accurately reconstructing the geometrical features of buried objects when working in critical conditions is investigated. A customized microwave tomographic approach is used to tackle the imaging through the processing of comparative experimental and synthetic GPR data. The flrst ones have been gathered in laboratory controlled conditions, while the second ones have been obtained by exploiting an ad-hoc implementation of a CAD tool. Attention is paid to the signiflcant case of 'strong' scatterers having size comparable to the wavelengths of the probing signal, and possibly located close to the interface where the GPR antennas move. The results from imaging point out the potential of the proposed approach, showing in particular to which extent in challenging operational settings, it is possible to recover also the information about the shape of metallic targets in addition to their correct location and size.

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