Imaging Based on Correlation Function for Buried Objects Identification

Ground-penetrating radar is usually employed to detect such buried objects beneath the ground as pipes, cables, and mines. There exist several methods for monitoring the buried objects, some of which require a relatively long time and heavy computations to create an appropriate image. The signal sent to the environment is reflected due to the characteristic features of the environment, which eventually leads to detection of the buried objects. For detection of the near ground surface targets, there is a very poor distinguishability between the signal reflected from the buried objects and the one from the ground itself. Buried objects in this case are detectable using ultra-wide band signals in the frequency domain. Comparing the reflected signals from the ground with those from the objects in the aforementioned case, one can detect the buried objects. In this paper, the reflected signal from the ground is canceled using the time-gating method. To detect the buried objects, the signals reflected from different position zones are compared with each other based on the concept of correlation function which is suggested in this paper. The results of this paper are also compared with those of the reflected-power and back-projection methods. We demonstrate that by employing the proposed method, it is possible to detect all buried objects in these environmental conditions.