Disposable Stepped-Frequency GPR and Soil
Measurement Devices
You*, Z., Cross, J., Foo, K.Y., Atkins, P.R., Thomas, A.M., Curioni, G., and Islas-Cital, A.
*
School of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK
p.r.atkins@bham.ac.uk
Abstract— Some geophysical and geotechnical scientists would
wish to non-invasively measure the electromagnetic properties of
soils using inexpensive, even disposable, technology. They may
even wish to develop inexpensive and compact low-power GPR
equipment for such uses as teaching and mitigation of
construction risks during excavation. To this end, a heuristic
comparison is made between a commercial Vector Network
Analyser (VNA) and two very low cost VNAs sourced from the
amateur radio community. The results are used to illustrate the
potential for technology transfer from amateur communications
to the GPR community, in order that a wider range of
technologies be available for inexpensive implementation in GPR
and soil spectroscopy studies. It will be shown that even very low-
cost gain and phase detection semiconductor devices can be used
to develop simple GPR and soil measurement systems capable of
being used in the field to compliment GPR survey interpretation,
as well as for standalone soil monitoring.
Keywords- GPR; low-cost VNAs; soil spectroscopy; disposable
GPR; technology transfer.
I. INTRODUCTION
The Vector Network Analyzer (VNA) has become an
increasingly useful item of equipment for the laboratory
characterization of soil electromagnetic properties such as
apparent permittivity and conductivity. For readers without
knowledge of the fundamentals of VNAs, their operation can
be described in similar terms to the reflection and transmission
of light at a lens, as illustrated in Figure 1[1]. The network
analyzer emits a sinusoidal signal which falls incident on the
device under test (the lens in Figure 1), and the reflected and
transmitted voltages are determined relative to the incident
signal (often represented in decibels). The term 'vector' in VNA
represents the fact that the phase angle difference between
incident and reflected/transmitted signals is also determined.
VNA tests where only reflected signals are measured are
known as one-port systems, and those also measuring
transmission are known as two-port. VNA measurements can
be used, for instance, to determine the complex impedance of
probes, or coaxial cells, for calculating soil electromagnetic
properties. With a suitable antenna, or antennas in two-port
measurements, the VNA can also be used as a GPR system.
However, the significant financial costs associated with
VNA purchases can be argued as a significant barrier to their
widespread use for soil characterization and monitoring. In this
978-1-4244-4605-6/09/$25.00 ©2009 IEEE
regard, a parallel can be made to Time-Domain Reflectometry
(TDR) which, through the work of Topp et al. [2], allowed
reduced financial outlay through the use of commercial cable-
testing equipment. Prior to this, soil electromagnetic
measurements were the sole domain of researchers able to
employ sophisticated and expensive pulse generators and
sampling oscilloscopes such as those of Hoekstra and Delaney
[3]
. Since that development, TDR has transformed from a small
niche research area into a very widespread and popular
technique, while VNA use is still much less widespread.
Figure 1. Signals measured by a VNA.
The aim of the paper was to introduce the use of low-cost
VNAs that can be easily built in the laboratory, which may
offer adequate performance compared to commercial,
expensive VNAs, and introduces the idea that this may provide
a possibility for a low-cost stepped-frequency system for use in
soil spectroscopy and field monitoring, and potentially in target
detection. For field monitoring, where risks to expensive
equipment are high, low-end TDR systems are still lower in
cost compared to commercial VNAs and may be considered
more robust. On this basis it is instructive to consider whether
VNAs can be adopted for GPR and soil spectroscopy use;
allowing for a very inexpensive and robust solution akin to that
developed for TDR by Topp et al. [2].
Therefore, this paper describes available very low cost,
almost disposable, solutions and considers their potential use in
future GPR and soil spectroscopy work. In so doing, this
allows heuristic consideration of many areas of VNA use
which may otherwise not be possible, including:
• Inexpensive measurement and monitoring of complex
soil electromagnetic properties using probes (e.g. TDR
probes) or antennas where access to soil is not possible.
 • Monitoring of signal velocity and attenuation in where a very low cost VNA was developed [10] operating
electromagnetically dispersive soils, including between 200 kHz and 100 MHz, allowing measurement of both
associated with the geo-hazards of shrink/swell soils reflected and transmitted signals. This has subsequently been
and potential land-slip risks [4]. refined to the current miniVNA [11] shown in Figure 2, which
has an extended range to 180 MHz, both units having open-
• Development of small and robust short-range GPR source USB and RS232 communications allowing easy
systems for use in excavation plant, or even on shovels, operation with a PC.
to mitigate the serious hazards associated with
excavating into ground within urban areas.
• Development of very low cost GPR devices for
detection of shallow land-mines, and other battlefield
related ordnance, to facilitate improved humanitarian
de-mining efforts.
• Improved teaching of soil electromagnetic properties,
by reducing the need for equipment sharing and very
close supervision of expensive VNA use.
• Promoting greater understanding of the principles of
GPR, through wider availability of affordable signal
measurement technologies to interested and inquisitive Figure 2. The miniVNA antenna analyzer.
individuals.
• Development of simple and inexpensive GPR sensors to
compliment new detection methods such as capacitive- As an example of the potential for VNAs at the very low
coupled sensors [5]. price range of the miniVNA (< €200), one has been connected
to a simple low-frequency antenna and used for detecting
The above are just a few possibilities that can be anomalies of radar reflections from the soil, using the setup
significantly enhanced through availability of VNA equipment illustrated in Figure 3.
at almost disposable costs. The approach of designing an
effective yet low-cost VNA has also attracted some interest Despite the low cost, the miniVNA is accompanied by
among the research community [6]. This paper will consider the some significant weaknesses. The most obvious of these being
technologies available for transfer from radio amateur use into the limited upper frequency of 180 MHz imposed by the Direct
the wider GPR and soil spectroscopy communities. Following Digital Synthesis (DDS) semiconductor devices available for
from this, comparisons will be made between a laboratory low-cost circuitry at the time of its development. This is
grade VNA and two very low-cost amateur radio VNAs, in particularly significant for soil monitoring, as it has been
order to illustrate the trade-off this involves between price and identified that accurate water content measurements in
measurement accuracy. Then, the different VNAs described commonly encountered fine-grained soils can significantly
will be utilized for simple S21 tests, in order to consider their benefit from use of signal frequencies closer to 1 GHz [12]. At
potential for actual field use. such frequencies relatively accurate electromagnetic property
to water content relationships have been established [13].
II. LOW COST VNA TECHNOLOGY
Perusing websites of major VNA manufacturers, such as
Agilent [7] and Rohde & Schwarz [8], illustrates the very wide
range of VNA equipment available. For the most sophisticated
users, VNAs can offer highly accurate signal measurements
over very wide frequency ranges. This, often, can only be
justified for GPR and soils research uses in well defined areas
anticipating very significant research outcomes. For more
speculative research, and for field monitoring, equipment
sophistication is generally traded for lower cost, with some
VNAs now being available as compact units suitable for field
use.
Over recent years advances have been made in
semiconductor devices aimed at low-cost signal analysis. One
of these is the Analog Devices AD8302 [9], which can provide
scaled voltage outputs representing decibel losses and phase
difference between two signals. The AD8302 is especially Figure 3. A prototype miniVNA GPR antenna.
relevant here as it is capable of operating over all frequencies
of interest to general GPR use up to 2.7 GHz. The potential for Also, simple circuits based on the AD8302 inherit the two
such a device was not lost to the radio amateur community, phase measurement weaknesses shown in Figure 4 [9]: most
importantly it is only capable of determining phase differences
without the sign. Therefore, any autonomous monitoring
software would have significant difficulty determining whether
measured phase is positive or negative, compared to the test
signal, leading to equal difficulty in determining the complex
impedance of any probes or antennas attached. Also, the
AD8302 suffers significant potential errors close to 0° and
180° phase [10][9][14] that increase with measurement frequency.
The difficulty in fully resolving phase differences can,
however, be overcome using more sophisticated circuits: for
instance, in undertaking measurements on plasma generated in
a coaxial resonator, between 500 MHz and 2 GHz, Kantz et al.
[14]
successfully utilized two AD8302 devices separated by a
90° delay line.
Figure 4. AD8302 phase to output voltage relationship [9].
Addressing the limitations of the miniVNA, and AD8302,
in the radio amateur community has led to a more recent low
cost VNA, the VNWA2 [15][16], illustrated in Figure 5. The
VNWA2 utilizes two DDS devices mixed to provide a
frequency range covering 1 kHz to 1.3 GHz, making it suitable
for wide-band soil measurements and GPR uses. Furthermore,
this more sophisticated circuit, although more expensive than
the miniVNA (c. €400), allows proper resolving of the phase
sign which also facilitates full calibration using standard open,
short and 50Ω load terminations.
The VNWA2 is also available in kit form, thereby allowing
teaching of the full GPR equipment life-cycle and allowing
cross-disciplinary teaching and student projects. The most
significant weakness of the VNWA2 is the precise timing
requirements it imposes on the host PC, requiring either a
parallel port interface or use of a special USB/parallel adaptor.
Compared with the miniVNA this complicates the possibility
for very compact microcontroller based field monitoring
equipment. However, it is still of use to this paper as a
representation of the state of sophistication that can be
achieved in low-cost VNA circuits, which in future could be
developed more specifically for compactness (the VNWA2
being only 100mm x 60mm). For many GPR uses, this
limitation is obviously unimportant.
Figure 5. The VNWA2 circuit board.
III. VNA TECHNOLOGY COMPARISON
In order to consider the usefulness of the low-cost VNAs,
their return loss magnitudes and phase angles (together forming
the complex one-port reflection coefficient known as the S11
scattering parameter) were compared to those measured using a
laboratory grade Rohde and Schwarz ZVL3 VNA. The S11
measurements were performed on a non-terminated (i.e. open)
coaxial cable with a length of 1265 mm. Use of a coaxial cable
in these tests is admittedly idealized, as it does not account for
discrepancies that may occur where signal losses are high (i.e.
at the limits of the VNA dynamic range), nor where signal to
noise ratios are very low. However, it provides a useful
baseline comparison prior to further considering VNA
performance in the next section.
The frequency range of both the ZVL3 and VNWA2 were
from 1 MHz to 1 GHz, with 4000 and 2000 data points
respectively, and the MiniVNA measured up to its maximum
of 180 MHz over 500 data points. Both the ZVL3 and the
VNWA2 were calibrated with open, short and matching load,
while the MiniVNA was calibrated with an open load only.
The return loss results are presented in the form of normalised
magnitudes of reflected voltage in Figure 6, and phase
measurement comparisons are shown in Figure 7.
Individual measurements from the VNWA2 included noisy
ripples that only appear from approximately 600 MHz
onwards. These ripples were smoothed out by applying a 10-
point moving average filter across the data points. The
magnitude of the ripples was in the region of 0.19 dB
(calculated from the standard deviation of the noisy data from
the smoothed data).
The VNWA2 results demonstrate close agreement to the
ZVL3, with small phase degradation towards 1 GHz. This may
be a result of the imperfectly matched calibration plane
between the two units, which is difficult to completely rectify
in these preliminary data due to the three different cable
connection methods employed by the different VNAs. Also,
this may to some extent be due to the signal generation method
employed by the VNWA2.
Figure 6. Comparison of return loss data.
Figure 7. Comparison of phase data.
Due to the limited frequency range of the DDS devices
used (specified as 400 MHz maximum), higher frequencies
rely on a separately-clocked dual DDS system and DDS over-
clocking. This could be expected to provide reduced quality
reflection data as measurement frequencies are pushed to the
limits of this experimental arrangement [15]. As DDS device
frequencies increase over time, future dedicated GPR and soil
measurement VNA circuits may be able to overcome this
minor limitation.
The results obtained from the MiniVNA are less
comparable as that unit is not calibrated with the same
methodology. This is due to the relative simplicity of the
miniVNA, compared to the ZVL3 and VNWA2, which only
allows measurement of relative magnitude and phase without a
full error correction model being applied. Therefore, miniVNA
measurements are not fully corrected for such factors as
directivity errors in the voltage measuring directional coupler,
nor errors due to impedance mismatch between the miniVNA
and attached cables, even if those cables are the usual 50Ω
types generally expected to match a VNA port.
IV. VNA TESTS
Two bowtie antennas were built to carry out transmission
tests. The antennas were designed with a centre frequency of
250 MHz. The antennas were then connected to the ZVL3 to
carry out S21 measurements over the frequency range of 75 to
300 MHz, with antenna separations of 1, 2 and 3 m. S21 is a
transmission measurement: a signal is output from Port 1 into
the transmit antenna, signal amplitude and phase then being
measured at the receive antenna input (Port 2). The
arrangement is depicted in Figure 8. The measurements were
carried out in a cluttered and unshielded environment.
Furthermore, S21 measurements indicate that the effective
bandwidth of the antennas was approximately 75 MHz offering
a sub-optimal range resolution of around 2 to 4 m in the
time-domain.
Figure 8. The bow-tie antenna.
The same measurements were then repeated using the
VNWA2, over the same frequency band. Due to the frequency
band requirements, the miniVNA was not used in this test. The
complex S21 values were then converted into the time-domain
using the inverse Fourier Transform. It is worth noting that a
Tukey window was applied to the complex S21 measurements
in order to reduce range sidelobes at the expense of decreased
range-resolution in the time-domain. The measurements were
also zero-padded to account for the negative frequencies in the
frequency domain, before applying the inverse Fourier
Transform. No further post-processing (such as background
subtraction or attenuation compensation) was applied in the
time-domain. The results are shown in Figure 9 and Figure 10.
The results demonstrate that the different separations of the
antennas are identified in the location of the first peak in the
time-domain response. This agrees with the expectation that a
greater antenna separation increased the time duration before
the transmitted energy was received. Lower signal amplitudes
were also observed in the received energy. The peak to trough
levels on both plots showed a close agreement, with the ZVL3
producing more prominent peaks by qualitative comparison.
The results point to the potential robustness of such a system
even when implemented with low-cost VNAs.
Figure 9 Time-domain response of S21 measured using the ZVL3.
Figure 10. Time-domain response of S21 measured using the VNWA2.
V. CONCLUSIONS
This paper aimed to provide a heuristic view of current
VNA technologies suitable for future development of
inexpensive, potentially disposable units, which may find
application in GPR and related soil spectroscopy research,
training, and long-term in-situ field monitoring. To that end, it
can be seen that very low cost VNA technologies are currently
possible, although it is accepted that for scientifically rigorous
measurement of soil properties, the commercial VNA offered
by major manufacturers will still be required.
In particular, more sophisticated, but still low-cost, VNAs
such as the VNWA2 have been found to show reasonable,
albeit suboptimal, correlation with a laboratory grade VNA.
However, due largely to the current state of development of
low-cost DDS devices, such correlation reduces, and noise
becomes more significant, as operating frequencies are
increased. Also, for the very simplest models, such as the
miniVNA, lack of full calibration and error removal provide
significant limitations. Obviously the more traditional, and
more expensive, laboratory grade VNAs are therefore to be
preferred where the highest accuracy is required. However, for
widespread implementation of frequency domain
measurements in low-cost, potentially disposable, GPR and
soil measurement devices, an acceptable trade-off may exist
between cost-minimization and accuracy.
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