High-resolution penetrating radar for ice thickness measurement

Abstract

We have developed a high-resolution penetrating radar to measure glacial ice thickness. With an operating frequency band of 100-150 MHz, this radar can provide a range resolution of less than 2 m in ice. The radar is designed to measure ice sheet thickness up to 3000 m. The system uses pulse compression and coherent integration techniques to obtain a high processing gain. A high-speed Direct Digital Synthesizer (DDS) is used to generate a chirp with a very short pulse width to obtain a small blind zone. A dual-channel receiver with two different gains is used to obtain a very high dynamic range. In this paper, we provide a brief system description, and some experimental results which prove that the radar system is effective for ice thickness measurement.