Publications

Final Report of LDRD Project: An Electromagnetic Imaging System for Environmental Site Reconnaissance

Denison, Gary J.; Loubriel, Guillermo M.; Buttram, Malcolm T.; Rinehart, Larry F.; O'Malley, Martin W.; Zutavern, Fred J.

This report provides a summary of the LDRD project titled: An Electromagnetic Imaging System for Environmental Site Reconnaissance. The major initial challenge of this LDRD was to develop a ground penetrating radar (GPR) whose peak and average radiated power surpassed that of any other in existence. Goals were set to use such a system to detect the following: (1) disrupted soil layers where there is potential for buried waste, (2) buried objects such as 55-gallon drums at depths up to 3 m, and (3) detecting contaminated soil. Initial modeling of the problem suggested that for soil conditions similar to Puerto Rican clay loam, moisture content 10 percent (conductivity = 0.01 mhos at 350 MHz), a buried 55-gallon drum could be detected in a straightforward manner by an UWB GPR system at a depth of 3 meters. From the simulations, the highest attenuation ({minus}50 dB) was the result of scattering from a 3-m deep vertically orientated drum. A system loss of {minus}100 dB is a typical limit for all kinds of radar systems (either direct time-domain or swept frequency). The modeling work also determined that the waveshape of the pulse scattered off the buried drum would be relatively insensitive to drum orientation, and thus easier to detect with the GPR system.