New developments in ground probing radar: the possibility of reconstructing a holographic image of underground reflectivity

During the last decade GPR has developed rapidly: instruments have become more compact and more digital, the field of application has broadened from non-destructive testing to humanitarian demining. Studies have been carried out to analyse the full information content of the backscattered wavefield trying to go beyond the time and amplitude analysis. In recent years, many researchers have focused on the possibility of applying holographic acquisition and processing to GPR data. This paper proposes a theoretical outline of a holographic acquisition and processing techniques; a block diagram of the proposed holographic radar; the outlines of the design and the realisation of a custom-built full-scale test-site and the results of the first simulations carried out with newly developed software. The basic rules for an optimum choice of the main acquisition parameters are also given together with a discussion of the main advantages and disadvantages of the proposed techniques