LAUSR

Ground penetrating radar (GPR) systems are equipment able to acquire underground images scanning the surface of the soil/pavement under investigation. Usually GPR records its own position along the scan line using a mechanical odometer, i.e., a rolling wheel in contact with the ground. Unfortunately, this simple and cheap solution can be not effective on uneven terrains. In this article, a completely different solution is proposed for retrieving the radar position along the scan. An additional couple of transmitting/receiving (TX/RX) antennas detects the distance of one or two corner reflectors (CRs). As the signal backscattered by the CR appears in GPR trace (with a suitable delay for separating air and ground signals), the position data are co-registered in the radar trace itself and no external synchronization is necessary. The technique has been successfully tested both for detecting the position of the radar along a line (1-D case) and on a surface (2-D case).