Shape reconstruction of scatterers by suitable inverse processing of GPR data

The ability to reconstruct the correct shapes of buried scatterers in geophysical and planetary applications is addressed here, based on the use of Ground-Penetrating-Radar (GPR) investigations. Objects of different shapes and materials have been considered and an extensive analysis has been carried out both from a campaign of measurements, performed with a commercial GPR system, and from accurate numerical simulations, obtained with ad-hoc implementation of a CAD tool. Thanks to the use of a frequency-domain tomographic inversion algorithm, useful information about the shape characteristics of the detected objects could be recovered, even in critical cases of scatterers and measurement extents comparable to the wavelengths of the probing signal. © 2012 IEEE.