Linearized multi-frequency inversion of ground penetrating radar data

Abstract

Although inverse scattering methods have reached a level of considerable sophistication in the past decades, their testing and verification remains predominantly numerical. By inverse scattering methods we understand those mathematical techniques that go beyond the trivial time-domain backpropagation or frequency-domain migration algorithms (sometimes called SAR imaging). The present study is concerned with the application of such inverse scattering methods to a practical problem of landmine detection using commercial ground penetrating radar (GPR) equipment. In particular, we investigate the performance of the so-called linearized inversion, i.e. the one where the description of the scattering process is subject to the Born approximation.