Wideband Antenna With Conductive Textile Radiators for a Dual-Sensor Subsurface Detection System

A wideband antenna with conductive textile radiators (WACTR) is investigated for a pulsed dual-sensor subsurface detection system, which is composed of a ground penetrating radar (GPR) sensor and an electromagnetic induction (EI) sensor. It is demonstrated that undesired clutter of the EI sensor arising from the metallic mass and conductivity of the GPR antenna radiators can be removed by choosing textile material for the antenna without degradation of the antenna's performance. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first application of textile material used in antennas for such an aim. The antenna also has a new feeding structure to excite the textile patches, which offers a mechanically more rigid solution and a wider excitation surface. Some measured and simulated antenna characteristics are presented for the antenna located in the dual-sensor search head (DSSH). The ground effects on the antenna performance are additionally investigated as a complementary study. The detection results of some selected targets buried in soil by means of the proposed WACTR are presented. The targets are detected even in the non-metallic and deep-buried cases and it is also demonstrated that the GPR and EI sensors are complementary sensors.