Detection of water in an airport tarmac using SFCW ground penetrating radar

This paper presents a study to determine whether ground penetrating radar (GPR) could be used to map the subsurface water below the surface of the main runway at Cape Town International Airport. The radar used was a prototype stepped frequency continuous wave radar developed at the University of Cape Town. Various affected areas were scanned and compared with core samples. The data was processed using two simple heuristic algorithms. These results are presented and conclusions are drawn based on known structure of the runway.