Layer Stripping in the Frequency Domain
and the Inverse Problem of
the Theory of Ground Penetrating Radars

By Dr. Ruben Airapetyan

Science and Mathematics Department
Kettering University
Flint, MI 48504_4898
rhayrape@kettering.edu


ABSTRACT

In this talk a new method, "layer stripping in a frequency domain", for the numerical solution of the inverse problem of the theory of ground penetrating radars will be proposed. (All previously known layer stripping methods worked in a time domain.)

Assume that the surface of the planet can be modeled by a planar layered medium. The ground penetrating radar system consists of a transmitter located over the surface and a receiver located on the surface. A pulsed electromagnetic field is transmitted. The receiver measures the horizontal components of both the electric and magnetic fields. The output of the receiver will contain reflections from the various planar interfaces. Multiple interactions between layers may contribute significantly to the receiver output. The goal of this work is to determine the electrical properties of the medium and the thickness of the layers from the receiver output.

Our method is based on the consideration of the complex frequencies and on analytical continuation of the given data to a domain of complex frequencies. This leads to damping of the output of the deeper layers with respect to the output of the upper ones. Thus, one can successively determine the electrical characteristics, the wave propagation speed, and the thickness of the layers starting from the first one and continuing with the second layer, the third layer, and so on. To establish the limits of the applicability of the method, an error estimate is derived which shows that the method is numerically efficient if thickness of the layers is not less than some resolution threshold. Numerical efficiency of the method is also illustrated by numerical testing.

To Be Presented At The

4th Forum On Numerics & Modeling for
Partial Differential Equations

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