Ground Penetrating Radar Applications in Mapping Underground Utilities

This paper investigates ground penetrating radar (GPR) as a non-destructive method to rapidly and effectively detect the buried utility pipes. The geometrical and physical properties of the subsurface scatterers and the physical properties of their surrounding material affect the ability of the GPR to detect the targets. Statistical analysis should be suitable for GPR data whose energy is randomly backscattered. Here, the principle component analysis (PCA) method is applied to preprocessed data to decompose the signal and obtain the principle element. After subtracting the lineament decomposed by PCA, the enhanced scattering information is shown in the residual profile. Further on, we propose an energy stacking method to extract buried utility pipes. The results demonstrate that the proposed processing flow allows for effective extraction of pipes and relevant information.