NDT&E International 119 (2021) 102414

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NDT and E International

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Maximal overlap discrete wavelet-packet transform aided microwave

nondestructive testing
Nawaf H.M.M. Shrifan a, b, Muhammad Firdaus Akbar a, Nor Ashidi Mat Isa a, *
a
School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Engineering Campus, Universiti Sains Malaysia, 14300, Nibong Tebal, Pulau Pinang, Malaysia
b
Faculty of Oil and Minerals, University of Aden, Shabwah, Yemen

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: The capability of microwave signals to penetrate inside composites and interact with the inner structure makes
Disbond them a very attractive candidate for composite inspection. Various techniques of microwave nondestructive
Microwave nondestructive testing testing (NDT) are used for detecting disbonds in composites. Despite their promising results, these techniques
Maximal overlap discrete wavelet-packet
suffer from poor spatial resolution due to the given features that do not significantly distinguish between the
transform
Bi-directional long short-term memory
defect and defect-free regions. In this paper, a hybrid signal processing based on a refinement feature extraction
method is employed to enhance the imaging efficiency of the disbond detection in composite material. This
technique is based on scanning the composite material with an open-ended rectangular waveguide operating
from 18 to 26.5 GHz and analyzing its reflections using the proposed hybrid signal processing method. Maximal
overlap discrete wavelet packet transform is employed to provide significant informative features of each fre­
quency point. The Bi-directional long short-term memory (Bi-LSTM) network approach is used to distinguish the
significant features and the outliers. The Bi-LSTM classifies each inspected location into a defect or defect-free
location. The findings presented in this paper show the advantages of the refinement method-aided micro­
wave technique in detecting disbonds down to 1 mm with an accuracy rate of 88.84%, a significant advantage
over any current disbond inspection technique.

1. Introduction
Glass Fibre Reinforced Polymer (GFRP) is a composite material
composed of fibreglass and epoxy resins-based matrix, is widely used as
a strengthening and insulation agent for corrosion-damaged structures
such as the steel pipelines in the oil and gas industry [1]. However,
improper adhesive application and moisture penetration through the
insulation materials can cause defects such as disbond to grow between
the GFRP insulation and the steel surface. Such defects could lead to
catastrophic failure if not immediately detected and repaired. Hence,
regular nondestructive testing to evaluate such defects has become an
immediate necessity to maintain the integrity of the GFRP insulated
pipelines.
Methods capable of assessing damage in pipelines are crucial for
saving the maintenance cost, improving the safety and reliability of the
entire system. However, most commercially available nondestructive
testing (NDT) techniques such as ultrasonic testing, eddy current, ther­
mography and acoustic emission have limitations in detecting the dis­
bond in GFRP based insulations due to poor signal penetration. Several
ultrasonic techniques have been used to inspect the composites [2–4]
and highly attenuating materials [5,6]. The use of ultrasonic to inspect
GFRP and highly attenuating materials can be challenging due to the
complexity of wave propagation in anisotropic composite structures.
The random scattering and high attenuation of ultrasonic waves reduce
the capability of defect imaging accurately. In these techniques, the
geometrical shape of the defected area is inaccurately defined, especially
in multi-layered materials with large thickness [7]. Thermography NDT
is an attractive technique for fast and non-contact inspection and widely
used to evaluate GFRP structure [8–13]. Thermography NDT is capable
of measuring the GFRP thickness and detecting subsurface defects based
on temperature variation between the sound and defected regions [14].
However, thermography inspection needs an expert operator and the
techniques require long pulse heating [10], heating up and cooling
down the infrared camera [15] or sample [9] due to the lack of stan­
dardization [16]. Moreover, thermography NDT provides less quanti­
tative information in the case of sub-surface defects, especially the size
and depth of defect [17] and the inspected image of defect shape is not
clear, particularly at the edges [8,12,13]. Eddy currents and magnetic

* Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: nawaf_shrifan@student.usm.my (N.H.M.M. Shrifan), firdaus.akbar@usm.my (M.F. Akbar), ashidi@usm.my (N.A. Mat Isa).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ndteint.2021.102414
Received 4 February 2020; Received in revised form 15 January 2021; Accepted 20 January 2021
Available online 24 January 2021
0963-8695/© 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
N.H.M.M. Shrifan et al.
particle techniques are restricted to inspect conductive materials. The
lack of the induced current and magnetic field of eddy currents and
magnetic particles, respectively, degrades the defect detection in the
dielectric materials [18]. The current inspection technique of removing
the insulation material to inspect prone areas, accompanied by
re-application of the insulation, is an expensive and time-consuming
process; yet, there may not even be a fault present.
To overcome these problems, a range of microwave techniques have
been reported for insulation inspection since electromagnetic waves at
microwave frequencies are likely to have a greater resolution in iden­
tifying insulation defects without the removal of insulation [19–21].
Unlike ultrasonic signals, microwave signals can penetrate inside insu­
lations such as GFRP, interacting with their inner structure and are
sensitive to changes associated with boundary interfaces. As a near field
inspection, an open-ended rectangular waveguide (OERW) microwave
probe performs non-contact inspection with a small stand-off distance.
Moreover, the waveguide is suitable for inspecting anisotropic materials
such as GFRP due to the polarization oriented electric field inside the
waveguide [22].
Several microwave NDT techniques have been proposed in the past
and these methods have provided promising results in identifying de­
fects. Time-Domain Reflectometry (TDR) implemented in Refs. [23,24]
uses inverse fast Fourier Transform (IFFT) to detect back metal peaks for
defect representation. However, the defect information may be split
between the coating and back metal peaks in the small depth defect
cases. Therefore, by processing a single peak, only some other important
information can be lost. The omitted information may provide accurate
defect evaluation combined with the imaging process. Moreover, prin­
cipal component analysis (PCA) is utilized for defect source separation,
as presented in Refs. [18,25]. PCA is employed to linearly separate mi­
crowave signals into three uncorrelated components. The components
refer to the GFRP surface, the inner layer of GFRP and back metal.
However, the small defect information may be covered by the compo­
nents of the outer surface and inner layers of GFRP. The dominant fea­
tures are not separated clearly and produce blurred edges of the defects.
In addition, nonnegative matrix factorization (NMF) is introduced in
Refs. [26,27] to blindly separate the spatial frequency features into a
defect and defect-free region. However, NMF gives a different approxi­
mated result at each run time due to different initial optimization values.
Moreover, NMF produces the worst result when there is a low spectral
resolution [28].
In GFRP inspection, the randomly weaved patterns cause permit­
tivity variations that influence the reflected microwave signals [23]. As
a result, a blurred spatial image is produced due to increases in the
likelihood of obscuring defects over 2D imaging. Therefore, the unifor­
mity of the defects shapes is not maintained, making the assessment of
the material’s state difficult. Several techniques are proposed to increase
the imaging capability of microwave NDT for inspecting GFRP struc­
tures. In Ref. [29], PCA is used for analyzing microwave response to
detect the defect and eliminate the pipe curvature influence. The PCA
features of the defect area are processed to form the time of flying (ToF)
peaks for measuring the defect depth. The depth of the defect can be
evaluated from both the peak time arrival or its magnitude. The tech­
nique successfully represents the defect location and shape based on
adjusting a threshold. In Ref. [30], a time-reversal (TR) technique is used
to detect impact damage and drilled holes in GFRP composite specimens
based on the source focusing of far-field microwave NDT. While TR
explicitly demonstrates positive results in detecting large-scale defects,
where the identification of defects is proportional to the size of the
defect, it is inefficient to detect small-scale defects.
On the other hand, a machine learning-based microwave NDT is
proposed in Ref. [31] to provide a reliable inspection with high classi­
fication accuracy on the entire specimen. PCA is used to extract the
microwave signal features to classify the coated steel specimens into
defects and defect-free. The extracted features are classified using a
combination of SVM and ANN classifiers. A higher accuracy rate of
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NDT and E International 119 (2021) 102414
99.62 is achieved when 13 PCA components are utilized. Although the
technique is limited to classify the inspected specimen into defect and
defect-free without defect evaluation, the machine learning-based in­
spection achieves reliable defect detection.
In the case of defect evaluation, the goal is to classify each inspected
location as defect or defect-free. In Ref. [32], the classification is ach­
ieved using supervised-PCA features and SVM classifiers to illustrate the
defected regions. The inspection is performed on a steel specimen to
detect the corrosion underneath. The last outcome value from SVM
classifier at each inspected location is used to construct a 2D binary
image. Although some pixels are improperly classified, the constructed
image is shown in the corrosion positions that render it capable of
determining the corrosion size. In this technique, PCA mapped the 191
frequency points to 15 dominant features in a lower space. The lower
space features do not correspond to the sweeping frequencies due to loss
of the original values of the swept frequencies [33]. Therefore,
providing more details about the acquired features may increase the
classification reliability, especially on a single location classification.
Nowadays, the research tends to employ advanced machine learning
to learn and measure the material’s degradation. The current attempts to
hybridizing them together to inspect complex structures have great
potential to enhance the quality and reliability of inspection [34]. By
leveraging recent advances in computer vision, a microwave NDT
technique is proposed in this paper based on a refinement feature
extraction method for disbonds detection and imaging of GFRP.
MODWPT is employed to provide more informative features about each
single frequency point of the microwave signal. Simultaneously, the
Bi-LSTM network is used to classify the features of each inspected
location into defect and defect-free to image the underneath defects. A
brief introduction to the signal processing using MODWPT and LSTM
networks is introduced in section 2. Section 3 explains the proposed
microwave NDT technique. The discussion of the experimental setup
and results are presented in sections 4 and 5, respectively. Finally, the
conclusion is summarized in section 6.
2. Theoretical background
2.1. Maximal overlap discrete wavelet-packet transform
Discrete wavelet transform (DWT) is a powerful technique for signal
analysis due to its capability to analyze an input signal in the time-
frequency domain. DWT decomposes the input signal (e.g. microwave
reflection coefficients) into approximation and detail coefficients as
shown in Fig. 1(a). The input signal (x) passes through a high-pass filter
(h) and a low-pass filter (g) and down-sampled by factor 2 (↓2). The
output of the low pass filter is the approximated signal (a) while the
output of the high pass filter is the details coefficients (d). This process
can be repeated several times to produce several decomposition levels
using the approximated signal again as input to DWT. Each filter gen­
erates a series of coefficients that represent and compact the original
signal. Thus, DWT decomposes the input signal into several sub-bands or
levels. Many advantages are provided using DWT, such as higher data
compression and reconstruction and signal de-noising [35]. However,
DWT only performs the decomposition from approximate coefficients
and further decomposition of details coefficients is omitted.
Discrete wavelet packet transform (DWPT) is an extension of DWT
with an additional step. DWPT decomposes both the approximate and
details coefficients at each decomposition level compared to the
approximate coefficients in DWT as shown in Fig. 1(b). However, the
down-sampling process, being a time-variant transform, both DWT and
DWPT losses aligning the decomposed coefficients correspond their
input parameters. Therefore, producing a time-invariant transform by
avoiding the down-sampling process is required to align the wavelet
coefficients corresponding to their input parameters.
Maximal overlap discrete wavelet packet transform (MODWPT) is a
time-invariant transform as proposed in Ref. [36]. In MODWPT, the
N.H.M.M. Shrifan et al. NDT and E International 119 (2021) 102414

Fig. 1. Three-level examples of signal decomposition using DWT (a), DWPT (b) and MODWPT (c).

input signal is decomposed into several coefficients using low- and
high-pass filters for several decomposition levels as shown in Fig. 1(c).
At each step of decomposition, MODWPT provides coefficients with
equal pass-band periods, the distances between peaks being equal. The
length of the generated coefficients equals the length of the input signal
by removing the down-sampling process that becomes a time-invariant
transformation [37]. As a result, all the decomposed coefficients corre­
spond to their time-series and are associated.
Mathematically, MODWPT coefficient s at level j can be obtained
from the convolution of the original signal x = s00 with infinite impulse
response (IIS) filters g and h are given as follow:
2.2. Long short-term memory
Long short-term memory (LSTM) is presented in Ref. [42] and
extended later in Ref. [43] to overcome the gradient instability limita­
tion of recurrent neural network (RNN). LSTM employs a memory cell to
keep its state over time and only the useful information is kept for an
extended time. In LSTM, an input sequence X = (x1, x2, x3, …, xT) is
mapped to hidden input sequence H = (h1, h2, h3, …, hT) and output
sequence O = (o1, o2, o3, …, oT) by calculating the activation gates’
values. These values are iteratively updated on the memory cell from t =
1 to T using the following equations.

1 ∑ ∞ it = σ(wxi xt + whi ht− 1 + wci ct + bi ) (5)

s2z
j (k) = √̅̅̅ g(n)szj− 1 (k − n) (1)
2 n=− ∞ ( )
ft = σ wxf xt + whf ht− 1 + wcf ct + bf (6)
1 ∑ ∞
s2z+1
j (k) = √̅̅̅ h(n)szj− 1 (k − n) (2) ct = ft ⊙ ct− 1 + it ⊙ tanh(wxc xt + whc ht− 1 + bc ) (7)
2 n=− ∞
ot = σ (wxo xt + who ht− 1 + wco ct + bo ) (8)
where the node number z = 2 m and m ≤ 2j− 1-1 ∈N. The properties of
scaling and wavelet filters g and h are respectively given as the ht = ot ⊙ tanh(ct ) (9)
following:
∑
∞ √̅̅̅ ∑
∞ ∑
∞ where i, f, c, and o denote to input gate, forget gate, cell state and output
g(n) = 2, g2 (n) = 1, g(n)h(n) = 0 (3) gate, respectively. The σ and tanh denote the sigmoid activation func­
n=− ∞ n=− ∞ n=− ∞ tion and hyperbolic tangent activation function, respectively. The w and
b represent the weight matrices and bias vector, respectively. The h is the
∑
∞ ∑
∞ ∑
∞
h(n) = 0, h2 (n) = 1, h(n)g(n) = 0 (4) hidden state output or it is also known as the output vector of the LSTM
n=− ∞ n=− ∞ n=− ∞ unit.
MODWPT has been widely used for feature extraction in power A single LSTM unit shown in Fig. 2 contains a cell state and several
quality estimation [37] and rolling bearing fault diagnosis [38]. The controlling gates are notated as input gate, output gate and forget gate.
extracted features from MODWPT increase the classification reliability Initially, LSTM employs the forget gate to decide what information to be
in various applications such as epileptic seizure based on electroen­ discarded from the previous cell state. The decision is taken using a
cephalogram signals [39] and gear fault using vibration signals [40]. sigmoid function in equation (6) and its output ranged between 0 and 1
Therefore, applying MODWPT on the microwave signal is expected to where 0 is completely discarded and 1 is kept. Secondly, the input gate
provide more information at each frequency point. Each single fre­ decides the portion of new information to be stored in the current cell
quency point is broken down into several coefficients along decompo­ state using equation (5) to update equation (7). Finally, the sigmoid
sition levels. These coefficients in different decomposition levels are function in equation (8) decides the information on the current cell state
approximately uncorrelated [41]. As a result, more information is pro­ be passed to the final output using equation (9). However, LSTM
vided about each single frequency point to increase the classification forwardly captures the previous information to update the hidden state
reliability, especially on a single location classification. without considering the information that occurred in the future.

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N.H.M.M. Shrifan et al.
Fig. 2. Typical LSTM cell.
In sequence labelling, the integration between the previous and
future information of the hidden state over a given time series is bene­
ficial [44]. Therefore, bi-directional structure of LSTM (Bi-LSTM) is
introduced in Ref. [45]. Bi-LSTM composes two of LSTM layers; the
forward LSTM layer and the backward LSTM layer, as shown in Fig. 3.
The previous information is captured using a forward layer while the
future information is captured using a backward layer. Then, both hid­
den states of forwarding and backward layers are concatenated to
construct the final output. Thus, Bi-LSTM can effectively utilize the
previous and future information in the sequence labelling.
3. Proposed method
In this paper, the proposed method integrates the advantages of
microwave signal, MODWPT and Bi-LSTM to work harmonically. The
application of MODWPT on the microwave signal provides more details
about each frequency point. Therefore, each single frequency point is
broken down into several coefficients along decomposition levels. These
coefficients should be wisely processed to provide informative features
about GFRP defects. For example, only the dominant coefficients of each
single frequency point should be kept. The dominant coefficients pro­
vide information about the defect and defect-free regions of the GFRP
sample. Meanwhile, the useless coefficients should be forgotten wholly
or partially.
The Bi-LSTM network is employed to keep the dominant coefficients
and discard the less significant of each single frequency point. Therefore,
each frequency point’s decomposed coefficients are represented as
Fig. 3. Bi-LSTM structure.
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NDT and E International 119 (2021) 102414
individual sequences to feed the input of the Bi-LSTM network. Thus,
each single frequency point is efficiently split into informative and
useless features using Bi-LSTM compared to PCA and NMF. Moreover,
all frequency points’ decomposed coefficients are involved in the im­
aging process without omitting any of them compared to TDR peaking
techniques. The stages of the proposed method are detailed in the next
sections.
3.1. Signal processing
Fig. 4 illustrates the entire phases of the signal processing stage.
Microwave complex reflection coefficients are measured at each scan­
ned location x and y using a vector network analyzer (VNA). The
magnitude of the reflection coefficient is obtained using the following
equation.
√̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅
mn (x, y) = Re(cn (x, y))2 + Im(cn (x, y))2 (10)
where m is the magnitude of the complex reflection coefficient c scanned
at the location x and y, n denotes the frequency point index from 1 to N
= 101, Re and Im denote the real and imaginary parts respectively. The
real part denotes the attenuation constant while the imaginary part
denotes the phase constant of the microwave signal.
To evaluate the magnitude reflections’ sensitivity in detecting the
disbonds, three locations are selected from the defect-free, largest dis­
bond and smallest disbond on the GFRP sample at each vertical line in
Fig. 5. The magnitude of the complex reflections is obtained from the
selected points, as shown in Fig. 6. At frequency point 84, the magnitude
variation of the reflection coefficient is inversely proportional to the
layer’s thickness. The magnitude values of the defect-free, smallest
disbond and largest disbond are closely arranged from the smallest to
the largest values, respectively. Fig. 7 shows the magnitude efficiency of
the frequency point 84 to image the disbonds in GFRP sample. The
examined frequency point shows the magnitude capability to image the
disbonds’ contours, especially the largest ones. However, the shapes of
the small disbonds are poorly imaged and difficult to recognize them.
Therefore, the magnitude of the reflection should be processed further
using MODWPT to enhance the efficiency of the disbond imaging in
GFRP coating.
A magnitude sequence m1:N (x, y) is processed using MODWPT for
several decomposition levels. In this study, 16 decomposition levels are
used to produce MODWPT decomposition coefficients dj,n (x, y) where j
denotes to the index of decomposition level from 1 to L = 16. The
decomposed coefficients at each scanned location are concatenated in an
N.H.M.M. Shrifan et al. NDT and E International 119 (2021) 102414

array named D (x,y) to simplify the discussion, as shown in (11).

⎛ ⎞ ⎛ ( ) ( ) ( ) ( )⎞
d1,1 ( x, y) d1,2 ( x, y) d1,3 ( x, y) ⋯ d1,N ( x, y)
⎜ ⎟ ⎜ d2,1 x, y d2,2 x, y d2,3 x, y ⋯ d2,N x, y ⎟
⎜ ⎟ ⎜ ( ) ( ) ( ) ( )⎟
D⎜ ⎟ ⎜
⎜x, y⎟ = ⎜ d3,1 x, y d3,2 x, y d3,3 x, y ⋯ d3,N x, y ⎟
⎟ (11)
⎝ ⎠ ⎝⋮ ⋮ ⋮ ⋯ ⋮ ⎠
( ) ( ) ( ) ( )
dL,1 x, y dL,2 x, y dL,3 x, y ⋯ dL,N x, y

where each row in D(x,y) includes the decomposed coefficients at the

same decomposition level for different frequency points. On the other
hand, each column includes the same frequency point decomposed co­
efficients at different decomposition levels. The decomposition co­
efficients array D(x,y) is generated for feature extraction purposes as
described in the next section.

3.2. Feature extraction

The extracted features should comply with the Bi-LSTM network

specifications that process sequential data such as microwave signals.
Moreover, Bi-LSTM is capable of processing multiple sequences as input
data. Therefore, the sequential data can be obtained from the decom­
position array D. However, there are two forms of the sequences in D (x,
y) that obtained from the rows and columns. In this analysis, the input
sequences are derived from columns that are the same as D(x, y) but in
the transposed form. As a result, 101 columns represent the input se­
quences with 16 long coefficients at each scanned location.
Two reasons are considered for selecting D(x,y) columns as input
sequences to the Bi-LSTM network. The first is processing the decom­
posed coefficients of each frequency point independently as a single
short sequence. Therefore, Bi-LSTM can remember the informative co­
efficients efficiently in the short sequences. The second is to ensure that
each frequency point contributes to providing informative features
compared to a single one in TDR techniques.
Fig. 4. Illustration of entire phases of the signal processing stage. To evaluate the usefulness of MODWPT coefficients, the magnitude
of 101 reflection coefficients from the defects on line E has been
decomposed into 16 levels using MODWPT. Fig. 8 shows the 16 co­
efficients of the frequency point 84 at the locations of the defect-free,
largest disbond and smallest disbond. Several variations between
defect and defect-free are observed in different decomposition levels

Fig. 5. The positions of the training set and testing of the GFRP sample highlighted in red and green color, respectively [23]. (For interpretation of the references to
color in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the Web version of this article.)

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N.H.M.M. Shrifan et al. NDT and E International 119 (2021) 102414

Fig. 8. The variations between defect and defect-free locations at different

decomposition levels of the frequency point 84.

such as levels 2, 5, 9 and 12. These variations improve classifier effi­

ciency during the classification process. For example, at level 9, the
variations of the coefficients are inversely proportional to the layer’s
thickness. The coefficient values of the defect-free, smallest disbond and
largest disbond are closely arranged from the smallest to the largest
values respectively. Therefore, the coefficient at level 9 of the frequency
point 84 is used as an example to image the disbonds on the GFRP
sample, as shown in Fig. 9. The disbonds are clearly shown based on
MODWPT coefficients compared to the disbonds shown in Fig. 7, which
are based on the magnitude reflections. Processing the magnitude of the
complex reflection using MODWPT provides meaningful features to the
Bi-LSTM classifier. These features are capable of improving the imaging
resolution of the microwave NDT.

3.3. The network structure

Fig. 6. The magnitude of the reflections coefficient obtained from defect and
defect-free locations on the GFRP sample.
The layers structure of the proposed network is shown in Fig. 10. The
sequence input layer is used to handle the extracted features from the
transpose of array D (x,y) with 101 sequences and 16 coefficients long.
The sequence input layer is utilized to feed the Bi-LSTM layer. Bi-LSTM
layer includes 50 hidden units with tanh state activation function and
sigmoid (σ ) gate activation function. The output of the Bi-LSTM layer is
passed to a fully connected layer. The fully connected layer combines the
learned features to be passed through softmax function. All the passed
features are normalized in the softmax layer. The softmax layer outputs
are the classification probabilities that are positive values between 0 and
1. Finally, the classification layer uses the classification probabilities to
assign the class of each given input. Moreover, in [46], Adam optimizer
is used to optimize the weights and biases parameters for minimizing the
loss function by taking small steps at each iteration. Then, the trained
network is employed to classify the testing set. The classification result
of each scanned location in the testing set is located in its corresponding
locations on the scanned sample to construct a 2D image.
The classification method is accomplished at the spatial level, indi­
cating that the signal received at each inspected position is labeled as a
defect or defect-free. Therefore, the variations between the defected and
defect-free locations can illustrate the 2D spatial image of the inspected
sample. Moreover, the defect evaluation can be achieved based on the
defect location and defect size demonstrated on the spatial image. Thus,
the classification results can illustrate the underneath disbond of the
GFRP sample.

4. Experimental setup

4.1. The inspected sample

In this experiment, the GFRP sample of thickness 23 ± 0.32 mm

shown in Fig. 5 is back drilled with various dimensions ranging from 10
Fig. 7. The variations between defect and defect-free locations at frequency
mm × 10 mm–20 mm × 20 mm. The depth of the defects is back drilled,
point 84.
ranging from 1 mm to 15 mm. The dimensions of the GFRP sample are

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Fig. 9. The variations between defect and defect-free locations at MODWPT decomposition level 9 of the frequency point 84.

the waveguide movement during the inspection process. One port cali­
bration is performed by connecting the 3.5 mm microwave cable with
three well-known calibration standard Open-Short-50 Ω Load (OSL).
After calibration, the errors due to Vector Network Analyzer (VNA), the
connectors and cables used to connect the VNA to the waveguide are
removed from measurements. The calibration process would effectively
shift the measurement reference plane to the microwave cable’s end
(input port of waveguide). The portable VNA is used to measure the
complex reflection coefficients from 18 to 26.5 GHz, as a linear sweep
with 101 frequency points.

4.3. Training and testing datasets

The inspected sample is divided into a training set and testing set.
The training set and testing set are obtained from the highlighted regions
by red and green rectangles, respectively, as shown in Fig. 5. The big size
defects are used for training purposes because conventional microwave
NDT techniques can easily detect the big size defects. Therefore, the
small size defects are kept as a challenge of the proposed technique to
detect them. The training set includes 1444 scanned locations in 724
defect-free locations and 720 defective locations. The extracted features
D (x,y) at each scanned location are used to train the Bi-LSTM network.
Fig. 10. The proposed network structure.

presented in Table 1. The sample is placed on metal during scanning 5. Results and discussion
such that it replicates the disbonds between GFRP laminates and pipe­
line metal, whilst leaving its top surface undisturbed. 5.1. Training efficiency

Long and short features sequences in D(x,y) are used to examine the
4.2. Inspection technique training efficiency of Bi-LSTM network. The long and short sequences
are obtained from D (x,y) and it’s transposed respectively. In the long
As shown in Fig. 11, the open-ended rectangular waveguide (OERW) sequences, 101 coefficients are included in each decomposition level.
microwave probe is used to inspect the sample. The sample is raster- Meanwhile, the short sequences consist of 16 coefficients in each fre­
scanned with a step size of 2 mm in the x- and y-directions. The quency point due to the transpose of the array D(x,y). Fig. 12 and Fig. 13
inspected area contains 3800 scanned points, respectively depicted as a illustrate the accuracy and losing factors during the training process of
2D array of 76 and 50 points in x- and y-directions. The stand-off dis­ the Bi-LSTM network, respectively. The efficiency of the training is
tance between the OERW probe and the sample is set to 1 mm as rec­ quietly optimized when short sequences are used to train the Bi-LSTM
ommended in Ref. [19]. The programmable positioner is used to control network. Compared to the long sequences, the accuracy factor is
quickly increased once the short sequences are utilized to feed the Bi-
Table 1 LSTM network. Increasing the accuracy rate due to the Bi-LSTM
The dimension of the GFRP sample. network quickly remembers the useful information of the short se­
Parameter Value quences compared to longer ones. The useful information is not faded
Sample size 152 mm × 110 mm very fast over the time steps. Therefore, the impact of the useful infor­
GFRP thickness 23 ± 0.32 mm mation is kept, and it is reflected in the accuracy factor in the final stage
Disbon dimension 10 mm × 10 mm, 15 mm × 15 mm, and 20 mm × 20 mm of training. However, both long and short sequences reach close accu­
Disbon depth 3 mm–15 mm with a step size of 3 mm racy after 550 iterations at the final stage of training.
1 mm–5 mm with a step size of 1 mm
On the other hand, the loss factor quickly decreases when short

7
N.H.M.M. Shrifan et al.
Fig. 11. The experimental setup of the proposed technique.
Fig. 12. The accuracy factor of training process.
Fig. 13. The loss factor of training process.
sequences are used to train the network compared to the longer se­
quences at the initial stage of training. Also, both of long and short se­
quences reach a very similar loss factor at the final stage of training. In
this study, the transpose of D(x,y) is used for feature extraction to detect
the disbond defects in GFRP sample.
5.2. Disbonds detection of GFRP sample
The disbonds detection of GFRP backed metal is highly depended on
the classification accuracy. The classification results are used to distin­
guish between the defect and defect-free regions in the inspected sam­
ple. Moreover, the classification results are employed to illustrate the
inspected sample’s defects’ positions and sizes. In this experiment, the
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NDT and E International 119 (2021) 102414
classification accuracy of the proposed method achieves 88.84% of the
accuracy rate. Compared to the technique presented in the literature
that uses the classification results to illustrate the underneath defects,
the supervised PCA-SVM classification results in Ref. [32] achieves
66.68% of the accuracy rate. Therefore, the hybridization of the pro­
posed technique significantly overcomes the compared literature tech­
nique. In other words, decomposing the magnitude of the microwave
signals using MODWPT provides more informative features about each
frequency point. Moreover, Bi-LSTM effectively recalled the dominant
features of the given short sequences. As a result, the classification ac­
curacy is increased compared to the given features of the supervised PCA
with the SVM classifier.
In the proposed technique’s imaging process, the classification
probabilities stored in the 2D matrix were plotted to illustrate the dis­
bonds between GFRP and the back metal. The image in Fig. 14 illustrates
that all the disbonds are clearly observed compared to the TDR tech­
nique in Ref. [23] and supervised PCA-SVM in Ref. [32] as shown in
Fig. 15 and Fig. 16 respectively. Moreover, a green color ripple is shown
around the small size defect with 1 mm depth circulated in black color in
Fig. 14. It is notated in Fig. 17. The proposed technique is capable of
detecting the small size defect with 1 mm depth, while the supervised
PCA-SVM in Ref. [32] is incapable of effectively detecting the small size
defect, as shown in Fig. 16. In addition, the supervised PCA-SVM is also
incapable of separating the first two defects in lines 3 and 4. These de­
fects are illustrated as one contentious defect which makes the defect
assessment difficult. On the other hand, the TDR technique in Ref. [23]
shows the defects in a curved form which loses the sharpness of the
defects’ edges. Therefore, it is difficult to decide at which location the
defect edges are located clearly. Unlike the compared techniques, the
proposed technique sharply separates the defects of the GFRP sample
and detects the small defect with 1 mm depth. As a result, microwave
NDT’s spatial resolution is effectively increased when the proposed
technique is used.
Fig. 17 shows the variations in the classification probabilities be­
tween the defect and defect-free regions at line 4. Values of the defect-
free regions near zero while the defected regions near 1 can be clearly
separated from the defect-free regions. Moreover, the internal shape of
the defects is sharpened and smoothly represented using the proposed
method. As a result, the defects are well separated compared to the same
line in Refs. [23,32] as shown in Fig. 18 and Fig. 19 respectively. Be­
sides, the defected areas have semi-squared shapes near the original
shapes, as shown in Fig. 10. The hybridization of the proposed technique
can illustrate the defect and defect-free regions of GFRP sample
N.H.M.M. Shrifan et al.
Fig. 14. The imaging result of the proposed technique illustrates the disbond defects of the GFRP sample.
Fig. 15. The imaging result of the compared technique [23].
Fig. 16. The imaging result of the compared technique [32].
Fig. 17. The classification probability values of the proposed method at the
inspected line 4.
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NDT and E International 119 (2021) 102414
Fig. 18. Magnitude of the reflection coefficient at line 4 in Ref. [23].
Fig. 19. The classification probability values of the compared technique in
Ref. [32] at the inspected line 4.
smoothly.
Fig. 20 shows the location and size of the defects using the proposed
technique compared to the actual location and size of the GFRP sample.
All the defects are significantly aligned with the actual location.
Although the encouraging results, the size of defects is bigger than the
actual size due to the waveguide aperture size (10.6 × 4.3 mm2). During
the raster scanning, a part of OERW enters the defected area while the
rest of the aperture still in the non-defected area. Therefore, the aperture
covers the defected and non-defected areas simultaneously, which leads
to big defects’ size. The issue can be solved when a smaller microwave
waveguide is used in the inspection process [23].
Although the compared techniques cannot effectively detect the
small size defect with 1 mm depth, the deep defect can be observed using
the proposed technique, which increases the inspection sensitivity.
However, microwave waveguide sensitivity should be farther increased
N.H.M.M. Shrifan et al.
Fig. 20. Comparison between the result of the proposed technique with the size
and the location of the actual defect of the GFRP sample.
for reliable detection of the small depth of defects. The deep defect is
located far from the microwave waveguide and obstructed with large
coating thickness. As a result, the attenuation of the operational fre­
quency range (e.g. 18–26.5 GHz) is increased and incapable of being
reflected robustly from that location. Therefore, it can be recommended
that increasing the operating frequency range to penetrate inside the
coating deeply. As a result, reliable detection of the small defects’ depth
can be achieved when the proposed technique is used.
6. Conclusion
In this paper, the microwave NDT technique, in conjunction with a
refinement feature extraction method is employed to enhance the im­
aging efficiency of disbonds detection in composite material. The pro­
posed method takes the advantages of the microwave reflection
coefficients in a different way to be processed as sequential data through
MODWPT and Bi-LSTM network. Every single coefficient is decomposed
using MODWPT into 16 decomposition levels, where each frequency
point is extended to 16 meaningful features as a sequence to train the Bi-
LSTM network. The trained network effectively classified the input data
into a defect and defect-free with 88.84% of accuracy rate and highly
overcame the supervised PCA-SVM classifier technique.
The classification results construct a 2D spatial image to illustrate the
position and size of the GFRP disbonds. The proposed method signifi­
cantly detected the small size defect down to 1 mm depth of disbond
compared to other methods presented in the literature. Hybridizing
10
NDT and E International 119 (2021) 102414
between signal processing (e.g. MODWPT) and advanced machine
learning (e.g. Bi-LSTM) significantly improves microwave nondestruc­
tive inspection efficiency.
Author statement
This work was supported by the Ministry of Education Malaysia
Fundamental Research Grant Scheme (FRGS) under Grant 203.
PELECT.6071430.
Declaration of competing interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial
interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence
the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgments
This work was supported by the Ministry of Education Malaysia
Fundamental Research Grant Scheme (FRGS) under Grant 203.
PELECT.6071430.
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Nawaf H. M. M. Shrifan received a Bachelor’s degree in com­
puter science and engineering from the University of Aden,
Aden, Yemen, in 2006 and the MSc. degree in Informatics from
Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM), Pulau Pinang, Malaysia, in
2017. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. degree in Microwave
Nondestructive Testing at the School of Electrical and Elec­
tronic Engineering, Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM), Pulau
Pinang, Malaysia. From 2008 to 2014, he was a Lecturer in the
Department of Oil and Gas Engineering, Faculty of Oil and
Minerals, University of Aden, Shabwah, Yemen.
Muhammad Firdaus Akbar (GS′ 16-M18) received the B⋅Sc. de­
gree in Communication Engineering from the International Is­
lamic University Malaysia (IIUM), Malaysia, in 2010, and the
M.Sc. and Ph.D. degree from the University of Manchester,
Manchester, U.K, in 2012 and 2018, respectively. From 2010 to
2011, he was with Motorola Solutions, Pulau Pinang, Malaysia
as Research and Development Engineer. From 2012 to 2014, he
was an Electrical Engineer with Usains Infotech Sdn Bhd,
Penang, Malaysia. He is currently a Senior Lecturer with the
Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM). His current research interests
include electromagnetics, microwave nondestructive testing,
microwave sensor and imaging.
Nor Ashidi Mat Isa received the B. Eng. Degree in Electrical and
Electronic Engineering with First Class Honors from Universiti
Sains Malaysia (USM) in 1999. In 2003, he went on to receive
his Ph.D. degree in Electronic Engineering (majoring in Image
Processing and Artificial Neural Network). He is currently a
Professor and the Deputy Dean (Academic, Career and Inter­
national) at the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering,
USM. His research interests include intelligent systems, image
processing, neural network, biomedical engineering, intelligent
diagnostic systems and algorithms.