Analysis of Scattering Characteristics of Subsurface Radar Pulse by Buried Object in Random Media using 3-Dimensional FDTD Method

Abstract

Recently, subsurface radar is paid worldwide attention for detection of buried objects, such as gas and water pipes, archaeological remains and mines. For these applications in the underground media, subsurface radar of very high resolution is required. However, since the underground media is inhomogeneous, many undesirable scattered waves are generated and the received signals will have random fluctuations. In this paper, we present our statistical investigations on the effects of random media, such as fluctuation and distortion of target signal at the receiver, as a fundamental study of error in target detection using pulse radar. These analyses are essential to find the statistical relationships between the random media and target detection error. Simulation results are presented for various models of random media using 3-dimensional Finite-Difference Time-Domain (FDTD) method. The statistical evaluations for reasonable prediction of the above relationships are demonstrated by numerical examples.