Performance measurements for full wave inversion (FWI) based multistatic handheld ground penetrating radar (GPR) for landmine detection

This paper reports the results of a study to investigate the impact of antenna configuration and rough ground surface on the performance of multistatic handheld ground penetrating radar (GPR) systems for anti-personnel (AP) landmine detection. The work is a follow on to the conclusions presented in [1] which include the fact that enhanced imaging through full wave inversion (FWI) is achieved with multiple receivers in comparison to typical bistatic systems in handheld GPR. This paper seeks to address a couple of aspects of future work outlined in the aforementioned work. Specifically, the study aims to quantitatively characterise the effect of different antenna configurations and rough ground surface on the performance of small multistatic GPR systems used for FWI based subsurface imaging for demining operations. The 3D electromagnetic (EM) software CST STUDIO SUITE is used to model and simulate the GPR system and singular value decomposition (SVD) analysis is used to estimate parameter sensitivity based on the assumption of prior FWI.