Improvement of GPR tracking by using inertial and GPS combined data

In most applications of Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR), it is very important to combine the radar with an accurate positioning system. This allows solving errors in the localisation of buried objects, which may be generated by measurement conditions such as the soil slope, in the case of a ground-coupled GPR, and the aerial vehicle altitude, in the case of a GPR mounted on a drone or helicopter. This paper presents the implementation of a low-cost system for positioning, tracking and trimming of GPR data. The proposed system integrates Global Positioning System (GPS) data with those of an Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU). So far, the electronic board including GPS and IMU was designed, developed and tested in the laboratory. As a next step, GPR results will be collected in outdoor scenarios of practical interest and the accuracy of data measured by using our positioning system will be compared to the accuracy of data measured without using it.