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fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/TIM.2020.2984415, IEEE
Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INSTRUMENTATION AND MEASUREMENT, VOL. XX, NO. XX, OCTOBER 2019
A Highly-Digital Multi-Antenna Ground-Penetrating
Radar (GPR) System
Arvind Srivastav, Phong Nguyen, Student Member, IEEE, Matthew McConnell,
Kenneth A. Loparo, Life Fellow, IEEE, and Soumyajit Mandal, Senior Member, IEEE
Abstract—Ground-penetrating radar (GPR) is a widely pop-
ular sensing method with broad applications in non-destructive
subsurface imaging. This paper presents a multistatic GPR for
vehicle-mounted roadway and utility monitoring applications that
employs several methods to improve performance compared to
the state-of-the-art. The proposed system illuminates the subsur-
face with pseudo-random codes (m-sequences) that have near-
ideal autocorrelation properties. As a result, the received signal
can be matched-filtered to provide pulse-compression, which
improves both range-resolution and depth of scan compared
to impulse-based GPRs. It also uses a highly-digital transmit
and receive architecture based on direct FPGA-based transmit
pulse generation and direct radio frequency (RF) sampling
of the received echoes. Further, the analog front-end uses an
8 × 8 multistatic antenna array design with broadband antipodal
Vivaldi elements to provide spatial diversity, which leads to
improved object localization and reduced drift between scans.
Experimental results from indoor and outdoor test-beds confirm
the functionality of the proposed GPR system.
Index Terms—Ground penetrating radar, GPR, multistatic,
MIMO, pseudo-random sequences, m-sequence, pulse compres-
sion, antipodal Vivaldi antenna, FPGA.
I. I NTRODUCTION
Ground penetrating radar (GPR) is a popular non-destructive
modality for rapid subsurface imaging. It is extensively used
for various purposes, including assessment of structures and
pavements, localization of utility lines, study of groundwater
contamination, detection of landfills and landmines, geotech-
nical engineering, sedimentology, glaciology, and archaeol-
ogy [1]–[12]. Recently, its application in autonomous driving
was demonstrated by using road subsurface signatures ob-
tained from GPR for real-time vehicle localization [13].
GPR systems work on the principle of time of flight (ToF)
measurement to generate subsurface profiles and discern the
underlying objects [14], [15]. These systems transmit electro-
magnetic (EM) pulses at regular intervals. These pulses un-
dergo attenuation while traveling and are reflected (scattered)
by the inhomogeneities at interfaces between objects with
different electromagnetic properties, such as layer boundaries,
cracks, buried pipes, and water tables [16]. The ToF of the
reflected EM waves to the receiver varies based on interface
depth, leading to peaks at various delays. The resultant peaks
Manuscript received October 16, 2019. (Arvind Srivastav and
Phong Nguyen are co-first authors.) (Corresponding author: Phong Nguyen)
A. Srivastav is with Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA (email:
arvindsr@stanford.edu).
P. Nguyen, M. McConnell, K. A. Loparo, and S. Mandal are with Case
Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH 44106, USA (email: {phn10,
mjm28, kal4, sxm833}@case.edu).
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1
in the received signal are processed to obtain the subsurface
profile, while the level of attenuation is used to estimate the
associated dielectric properties [17], [18].
Based on the mode of operation, GPR systems are broadly
classified as either time-domain or frequency-domain radars.
Time-domain systems include continuous wave (CW), im-
pulse, and coded-pulse radars, while frequency-domain sys-
tems include stepped-frequency continuous wave (SFCW) and
frequency modulated continuous wave (FMCW) [19] radars. In
contrast to time-domain radars, frequency-domain radars vary
the frequency of the transmitted signal over an interval, so the
ToF information is encoded as frequency or phase shifts of the
received signal. As a result, these systems require frequency-
domain processing to extract the embedded information.
Time-domain CW radars are not of much use as GPRs since
they cannot provide target range information. By contrast,
impulse GPRs obtain range information by transmitting analog
pulses (generally Gaussian-shaped) at regular intervals [6],
[13], [20]–[25]. Since these pulses have fixed unity time-
bandwidth product (TBP), impulse GPRs suffer from a trade-
off between scan depth and range resolution [26]. Thus,
GPRs operating at high (GHz) frequencies can offer higher
range resolution due to large available bandwidth, but have
lower scan depth due to fast signal attenuation. Similarly,
GPRs in the sub-GHz range can offer higher scan depth, but
lower range resolution. Finally, coded-pulse GPRs transmit
modulated digital codes that spread the pulse energy over a
long duration while maintaining its bandwidth. Such optimized
codes (also known as spreading sequences) thus provide high
TBP, which helps to overcome the depth-resolution trade-off.
Among frequency-domain systems, SFCW GPRs trans-
mit sinusoidal waves at regularly-stepped frequencies. Since
SFCW GPRs transmit continuously, they have efficient power
usage, which provides them with a performance advan-
tage over intermittently-transmitting impulse GPRs. However,
SFCW GPRs too are affected by the depth-resolution trade-off,
though in a more stratified fashion, i.e., the range resolution
is highest near the surface and degrades in steps with depth.
On the other hand, FMCW GPRs transmit linear chirps over
regular intervals. Since the ToF is contained in the time delay
of the received chirp, the demodulated received signal has
low bandwidth even if the chirp has a very large bandwidth.
Thus, along with offering high TBP, FMCW GPRs require
a much slower analog-to-digital converter (ADC) than coded-
pulsed GPRs. However, FMCW GPRs, being analog-intensive,
require significantly higher cost as well time investment in de-
signing and prototyping compared to flexible digital-intensive
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Arria 10
FPGA core
TX PCB
Tx antenna array

SP8T switch

A
Native PHY M-sequence

FMC A
pulse

FMC
SERDES
3Gbps generator
Variable Balun
Gain
Amplifier Multi-scan
f0 controller
Computation pipeline
RX/ADC Clock
Clock fSR
Rx antenna array

{f0,
PCB generator {fS, fSR} Scan

FMC B
generator Pipeline
SP8T switch

fSR} Cross- System

x 20 frames
x 20 frames
{fS{fS,
, f0, f0,
fSR} buffer serializer Raw
correlation Trace A-scan controller
fSR} JESD204B data

Memory
& stacking output interface

FIFO
ADC IP core average
JESD204B bus (8 lanes) envelope buffer buffer
LNA & (12DJ3200)
Pipeline buffer detector
Fixed Gain 6 Gsps data
40 samples 40 samples stream
per frame FIFO interface

Fig. 1. Block diagram of the GPR system.

coded-pulsed GPRs. In addition, FMCW GPRs have the which are desirable for preventing degradation of subsurface
disadvantage of high self-interference if multiple simultaneous infrastructure under budgetary constraints.
transmitters are utilized. In this paper, we present a novel impulse GPR system that
Existing GPR systems (whether operating in time-domain addresses inherent performance issues in GPRs by transition-
or frequency-domain) generally use either monostatic (single ing from analog-based designs to a digital-intensive one. Our
Tx-Rx antenna) or bistatic (a pair of antennas) measurement system transmits software-defined pseudo-random sequences
configurations, both of which can only generate linear (1- (m-sequences) that improve the depth-resolution trade-off due
D) scans. Thus, contiguous linear scans must be repeated to their high TBP. It also utilizes an 8 × 8 multistatic design
several times to scan an area with these GPRs. In this process, to reduce scan drifts and improve object localization. The
the inevitable manual errors involved in choosing the starting presented system builds on our earlier work [29]. While [29]
points lead to drift in the generated radargrams, which reduces validated the method and discussed the transmitter, this paper
scan quality. Several research groups have recently developed describes a complete working system, including transmitter,
multistatic SFCW designs to reduce scan drift and improve receiver, antenna array, real-time data acquisition, digital sig-
signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). Examples include the localizing nal processing, and experimental results.
ground penetrating radar (LGPR) [13], which selects transmit- This paper is organized as follows. Section II describes
receive (Tx-Rx) pairs from 12 antenna array elements in a the overall architecture of the GPR system, including link
time-multiplexed manner, and the YAKUMO [6], which uses budget calculations and signal processing methods. Section III
an 8×8 Tx-Rx multistatic array. discusses the digital back-end and analog front-end. Design
State-of-the-art commercially-available GPRs employ other of the antenna arrays is discussed in Section IV. Section V
methods to mitigate the issues mentioned above. For instance, discusses system-level integration of the complete GPR sys-
RoadScanTM 30 [22] GPR (GSSI, Nashua, NH, USA) offers tem. Experiments and results from this system are presented
the option of two antennas (at 1 and 2 GHz) for scanning in Section VI, and the paper concludes with Section VII.
different depths. Additionally, up to four RoadScanTM GPRs
can be interfaced using the SIR 30 System [27] to reduce II. S YSTEM OVERVIEW
scan drifts. Similarly, the pulseEKKO R
[21] GPR (Sensors A. High-level architecture
& Software, Mississauga, ON, Canada), comes in a series Fig. 1 shows a high-level block diagram of the GPR system.
with operating frequencies ranging from 2.5 to 1000 MHz The system is built on an Intel Arria 10 system-on-chip (SoC).
for various applications. It also performs scan accumulation The FPGA fabric of the SoC is used for real-time GPR
(up to 65,536 times) at the receiver to increase the SNR, and operations, and its hard processor system (HPS), consisting
thus provide deeper scans. The Proceq GPR Live [23], [28], an of a dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 processor that runs Linux, is
SFCW GPR (Proceq SA, Schwerzenbach, Switzerland), uses used for on-board processing of the acquired data to generate
a small grid to scan an area with reduced scan drift. the radargram. While the system is 8×8 multistatic, it selects
While GPR is a very useful and versatile tool, some of Tx-Rx pairs in a time-multiplexed manner to reduce hardware
the inherent issues discussed above have limited its appli- complexity. The time-multiplexed operation has only minor
cations. Thus, the use of GPR in roadway and subsurface effects on radargram quality, as we will show in Section II-C.
utility monitoring is expected to significantly increase if these Within the FPGA fabric, a multi-scan controller logic
issues can be addressed without escalating system complexity block controls and synchronizes Tx-Rx operations using
and cost. In turn, such pervasive monitoring can enable the a low-jitter reference clock (f0 ) generated by a high-
adoption of preventive maintenance practices [2], [3], [7], speed analog-to-digital converter (ADC) board, namely the

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ADC12DJ3200EVM from Texas Instruments (TI). At the TABLE I

start of operation, the controller enables m-sequence pulse S PECIFICATIONS OF THE GPR SYSTEM

generator logic that generates an M -bit long m-sequence.

Parameter Specification
The sequence is sent to a high-speed serializer/deserializer
(SerDes) that clocks it out at 3 Gbps, resulting in a central Measurement type UWB impulse multistatic
frequency of 1.5 GHz for the Tx pulse. The pulse is sent Hardware platform Arria 10 SoC
to a custom Tx printed circuit board (PCB) via one of two Central frequency, fc 1.5 GHz
high-speed FPGA mezzanine card (FMC) connectors [30]. An Bandwidth, B 1.6 GHz (0.7-2.3 GHz)
FPGA-controlled variable gain amplifier (VGA) is used at the Antenna type Antipodal Vivaldi
Tx PCB to adjust the pulse amplitude before transmitting it Horizontal span 35 cm
through one of the eight Tx antennas. The antenna is software-
Pulse duration 4.67-42 ns
selected from the FPGA via a wideband 8:1 single pole-single
throw (SPST) analog switch. Simultaneously, at Rx PCB, one Maximum pulse power (P1dB ) 26.0 dBm (200 mW)
of eight Rx antennas is software selected from the FPGA to ADC sampling rate 6 Gsps
receive echoes from the ground. ADC resolution 12-bit
The receiver remains active during radar operation, while
the timing of the ADC sampling windows is tuned to ensure
that all echoes (including those from both direct coupling GPR system to achieve various scan depths while maintaining
and object reflections) are fully captured for later processing. the range resolution, reducing drifts in the scan, and improving
The low-jitter sampling clock required by the ADC is gener- object localization. These methods are briefly described below.
ated by an on-board RF frequency synthesizer (LMX2582,
TI), while the system reference clock f0 is generated by B. M-sequences
another synthesizer (LMK04828, TI). The two synthesizers M-sequences [32], [33] are cyclic M -bit long pseudo-
are frequency-locked to a common 10 MHz input generated random noise sequences generated using N -element linear
by a crystal oscillator (XO), thus ensuring that ADC samples feedback shift registers (LFSRs); they are defined by a maxi-
are synchronous with respect to the FPGA’s clock. mal length property that ensures M = 2N −1. These sequences
Since the GPR operates on ToF information, it is important also have near-ideal noise-like autocorrelation properties. In
to avoid any non-deterministic time delays while transferring particular, their autocorrelation function is given by
data from the ADC to the FPGA. Thus, we chose an ADC  N
(ADC12DJ3200, TI) that provides deterministic latency during 2 − 1, if k = 0
Rxx (k) = (1)
data transfers by using the JESD204B protocol [31]. ADC −1, otherwise
operation will be further described in Section II-A. where k denotes the bit shift. An illustrative autocorrelation
The FPGA unpacks and decodes the frames and stores plot of Rxx for an m-sequence generated by a N = 8-element
them in first-in-first-out (FIFO) memory, from which samples LFSR is shown in Fig. 2.
are retrieved and pre-processed (via pulse-compression and a
Hilbert transform) to extract a raw 1-D time-domain response
(A-mode scan) from the received samples. These scans are
Correlation amplitude

60
synchronously accumulated K-times in a buffer to increase 63
SNR and also reduce the bandwidth required to send data to
40
the ARM-based HPS via a memory-mapped Advanced eXten-
sible Interface (AXI) bus. After accumulation is completed, the 20
control unit generates a ‘data ready’ signal; a high-level HPS
-1
program (written in C) then reads samples from the buffer and 0
stores it in its L3 cache for further processing.
The GPR is designed to be mounted on a moving vehicle. A- -50 0 50
mode data acquired at different vehicular locations is stacked Δn
to create 2-D images (B-mode scans). Also, A-mode scans
Fig. 2. Theoretical autocorrelation function for a m-sequence of length M =
acquired at a given location from multiple Tx-Rx antenna pairs 63 generated by an N = 8 element LFSR.
can be processed to either i) improve B-mode image quality, or
ii) provide spatial resolution in the lateral direction (transverse Thus, when the received signal is matched-filtered (corre-
to the B-mode plane), thus generating 3-D volumetric data. lated) with the transmitted signal template, the energy in a
Table I summarizes the specifications of the proposed GPR 2N −1 bit long pulse is compressed into a single bit of duration
system. Its digital-intensive design allows easy programming Tbit . This is

equivalent to
bandwidth-time product (BTP) of
of pulse shape and duration. For example, our in-lab and ≈ 2N − 1 . The 2N − 1 × improvement in BTP compared
outdoor experiments (described in Section VI) utilized short to simple pulse shapes (e.g., rectangular or Gaussian) enables
(4.67 ns) and long (42 ns) pulses, respectively. This system deeper scans while maintaining range resolution ∆R. In fact,
achieves such flexibility and superior performance using a ∆R ≈ v/(2B) where v is the group velocity in the medium
combination of methods. Collectively, these methods help the and B ≈ 1/Tbit is the pulse bandwidth.

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To quantify improvement in GPR performance with m- where k is the Boltzmann constant, Ta is antenna temperature,
sequence length, we developed a link-budget simulator that and Fn is the receiver noise figure.
estimates the received SNR for a specified transmitted power, The ratio of received energy-per-pulse, Ep to the noise
Pt , at an incidence angle θ1 to an object of radar cross-section power spectral density (PSD), N0 is expressed as
(RCS) Arcs in a user-defined soil medium. The simulator
design is described as follows. Ep
= SN R × B × Tp , (9)
Link-budget simulator: Using the well-known Cole-Cole N0
model of dielectric dispersion [34], the relative dielectric

where Tp = 2N − 1 /B is the pulse length. Assuming
constant, r and conductivity, σ are defined as
Gaussian noise, the probability of false alarm (PFA) for
√ object
0 − ∞ detection, using the Q-function Q(x) = (1/2)erfc(x/ 2), is
r = ∞ +
1 + (ωτ )2
r !
0 − ∞ 1 Ep
σ = σ0 + ω 2 τ  0 , (2) PFA = × Q . (10)
1 + (ωτ )2 2 N0
where ω is the angular frequency, τ is the dispersion time
constant, σ0 is the DC conductivity, and 0 and ∞ are The link-budget simulator was tested with electrical pa-
the dielectric constants of the medium at DC and infinite rameters of soil models taken from [35] and summarized in
frequency, respectively. Table II. The output from the simulator is plotted in Fig. 3. A
For a lossy medium, attenuation constant, α and phase linear increase in LFSR length leads to an exponential increase
constant, β are defined as in the duration of m-sequence pulse. As a result, the BTP
s r also increases exponentially, resulting in linear increment in
µ  σ 2
scan depth. However, long pulses may lead to interference
α=ω 1+ −1
2 ω of strong transmitting signal with weak echos that arrive
after a delay from the medium. The receiver must remain
s r
µ  σ 2
β=ω 1+ + 1, (3) linear (unsaturated) during the transmit pulse to process such
2 ω echoes, which requires either i) excellent transmitter-receiver
where  = r 0 and µ = µ0 (vacuum permittivity). isolation (which is difficult to achieve in practice), or ii)
The wave velocity in air is v1 = c and in the medium reduced receiver gain (which results in lower sensitivity).
is v2 = ω/β. The corresponding refractive index in air is In our implementations, we limit the maximum m-sequence
η1 = c/v1 and in the medium is η2 = c/v2 . Using Snell’s length to 63 bits (generated by N = 6 element LFSRs) for
law, the transmitted angle is given as reliable operation of the GPR. For such pulses, we expect a

η1 sin θ1
 typical scan depth of 1-2 m (as indicated in the figure), which
θ2 = sin−1 , (4) is sufficient for roadway monitoring and some subsurface
η2
utility mapping applications [11].
where θ1 is the angle of incidence to the normal.
For transverse electric (TE) polarization, the transmission
TABLE II
coefficients T12 (air to ground) and T21 (ground to air) are E LECTRICAL PARAMETERS USED IN THE SOIL MODEL
η2 cos θ2 η1 cos θ1
4× η1 cos θ1 4× η2 cos θ2
T12 =  2 and T21 =  2 . (5) Soil type r0 r∞ σ0 (S/m) τ (ps)
η2 cos θ2 η1 cos θ1
1+ η1 cos θ1 1+ η2 cos θ2 Dry 4 2.5 0.005 9
Medium 8 3.5 0.02 9
The two-way path loss in the medium is Wm = e−4αr2
where z2 is object depth and r2 = z2 / cos θ2 is the effective Wet 15 5 0.05 9
one-way distance travelled in the medium. Using the radar
equation, the received signal power, Pr (f ) and total received
power, Pr,tot are given as 4
Maximum depth of scan (m)

Dry soil
2 Medium soil
Pt Gt Gr λ Wm T12 T21 Arcs
Pr (f ) = , (6) 3
Wet soil
(4π)3 r4
Z
Pr,tot = Pr (f )df . (7) 2
1.91m
Here r = r1 + r2 , where r1 = z1 / cos θ1 and z1 is the
antenna height (i.e., distance between the antenna and air- 1
0.98m
ground interface). Also Gt and Gr are the transmit and receive 0.63m
antenna gains, respectively, while λ is the wavelength in the 0
ground medium. The received SNR is calculated by dividing 0 5 6 10 15 20
Length of LFSR
Pr,tot by the total received thermal noise power:
Pr,tot Fig. 3. Simulated maximum depth of scan for different soils as a function of
SN R = , (8) LFSR size N . Parameters: Pt = 100 mW, Arcs = 100 cm2 , PFA < 10−4 .
kTa BFn

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Manchester encoding: Due to the use of rectangular bit
shapes, the spectrum of the m-sequence has a sinc2 (f ) en-
velope function with a cutoff frequency at fc = 3 GHz, which
is set by the 3 Gbps bit rate of the FPGA transmitter. As a
result, nearly 80% of the m-sequence power is contained in
the frequency range between DC and fc /2, as shown in Fig. 4
(top). Such low-frequency energy arises from the inherent
“runs” of successive ‘1’ or ‘0’ bits that occur in the m-
sequence. However, the transmit amplifiers and antennas have
band-pass filter characteristics that filter out low-frequency
spectral content. In particular, as shown in Fig. 1, the trans-
mitter uses a VGA (ADL5243, Analog Devices), a non-
reflective analog switch (HMC253AQS24, Analog Devices),
and an antenna (further discussed in Section IV); the overall
bandwidth is limited by the antenna to 0.6-2.5 GHz1 . As a
result, a significant amount of energy in each pulse is wasted
(i.e., not radiated). Additionally, the pulse shape is distorted,
which tends to degrade its autocorrelation properties.
To circumvent this issue, each bit in the m-sequence is
Manchester encoded, e.g., a ‘0’ is represented by a low-to-high
transition, and a ‘1’ is represented by a high-to-low transition.
The additional transitions effectively multiply the baseband
m-sequence by a sub-carrier at fc /2, which shifts the center
of the spectrum from DC to fc /2 = 1.5 GHz (see Fig. 4
(bottom) for an example). With this encoding scheme, the
fraction of generated power that is actually radiated (estimated
as the ratio of power within the system bandwidth to the total
power in the pulse), increases from 54% to 80%. In addition,
pulse distortion is significantly reduced.
tx bandwidth
Fig. 4. Power spectrum of a typical 63-bit m-sequence (top) before, and
(bottom) after Manchester encoding.
C. Multi-antenna setup
The proposed multi-antenna measurement scheme is de-
signed to reduce drifts between scans by replacing mechanical
sweeps in the lateral direction z (along the array) with elec-
tronic ones. It uses a 8 × 8 Tx-Rx antenna array in which both
1 This
frequency range was selected since it provides a good trade-off
between scan depth, range resolution, and antenna size for typical subsurface
materials (e.g., soil, asphalt, and concrete).
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5
transmit and receive elements are separated by d = 5 cm,
resulting in a horizontal span of 35 cm. The value of d = λ/2
at the highest operating frequency of 3 GHz, where λ is the
wavelength in air, but this choice is not critical since the arrays
are not operated in phased-array mode, as described next.
Prior work has shown that correlation-based (e.g., phased-
array) processing of multistatic GPR data in the GHz range is
of limited value; this is because the data decorrelates rapidly
with distance (within 2-3 cm at 1 GHz) [13]. Thus, to reduce
hardware requirements and the complexity of data acquisition
and processing, we implemented our multi-antenna setup in the
form of time-multiplexed single-input-single-output (SISO)
operations. The SISO pair selection scheme is schematically
shown in Fig. 5. The measurements are taken for SISO pairs
in a sequence starting from the pair (1, 1) till (8, 8). However,
the measurements for the corresponding symmetric pairs are
not acquired, since a full measurement, implemented using
the proposed time-multiplexing scheme, requires less than
1.5 ms. During this time, a vehicle moving at 30 km/hr
will only cover ∆x ∼1 cm, so the electrical properties of
the ground barely change over this distance. This condition
also simplifies MIMO processing of the acquired data, e.g.,
incoherent averaging across nearby pairs to provide deeper
scans with reduced RCS fluctuations.
1 1
i j
(i,j) z
7 7
8 8 x
y
Fig. 5. An antenna switching scheme that uses SISO pairs for time-
multiplexed multistatic measurements. Vehicle motion occurs along the x axis.
D. Clutter
Apart from thermal noise, GPR signals are also severely
degraded by clutter. In our case, clutter sources can be
separated into two main types: i) the air-ground interface, and
ii) interface between different ground layers (e.g., pavement
and base materials in a roadway). Because these environmental
interfaces are relatively flat, clutter noise often shows up as
strong horizontal lines in B-mode scans. Fortunately, much of
these unwanted signals can be removed using a simple signal
processing method named mean subtraction [36].
E. Signal processing techniques
Mean Subtraction: This method is based on the observation
that clutter in B-mode scans often consists of horizontal lines.
Thus, individually subtracting the average value from each row
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of pixels should remove much of the clutter. Mathematically,
this procedure can be defined as
N single-board computer (e.g., a Raspberry Pi). While using
1 X
s0i,j = si,j − × si,j ,
N i=1
where s is the original B-scan matrix, s0 is the matrix after
mean subtraction, N is the number of columns of s, and i
and j are the scan depth and vehicle position indexes (along
the y and x axes, respectively). In practice, the method can
generate horizontal artefacts in the image; these can be reduced
by “blurring” the average value calculation across a weighted
set of nearby rows. Further filtering of thermal noise can be
implemented using singular value decomposition (SVD) [37].
Singular Value Decomposition (SVD): We can use SVD to
extract signal components from noisy GPR images. Ideally,
the SVD extracts only important features from the image,
while ignoring insignificant details (which are generally due
to noise). It can be mathematically modeled as follows:
S = U × Σ × VT ,
where S is a M × N B-scan matrix, U is an M × M
unitary matrix, V is a N × N unitary matrix, and Σ =
diag(σ1 , σ2 , ..., σr ) with σi ≥ 0 ∀i. The columns of U and
V (denoted by ui and vi ) are eigenvectors of SST and ST S,
respectively. Expanding eqn. (12) gives
N
X The working of the serializer is summarized in Fig. 6.
S= σi ui viT ,
i=1
resulting in
S = M1 + M2 + ... + MN ,
where Mi is known as the i-th mode of S. Lower modes
generally contain the important image features, while higher
modes contain less significant features (mostly due to noise).
Thus, removing the latter results in denoising.
III. D ESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION
A. Digital back-end design
We selected the Intel Arria 10 SoC for implementing our
digital back-end because its FPGA fabric i) supports high-
speed gigabit data transmission (up to 12.5 Gbps) through
two FMC connectors; ii) includes pre-configured “hard” in-
tellectual property (IP) blocks to implement the JESD204B
protocol for ADC interfacing; and iii) supports high-enough
clock speeds to meet our data processing requirements. In
our design, one of the FMC connectors is used by the ADC,
while the other is used by two custom analog front-end boards
(transmitter and receiver). In addition, the SoC’s HPS features
an ARM Cortex-A9 processor that can easily run a true
operating system (embedded Linux), thus making it simple to
write high-level data logging and system control applications.
In order to simplify the design process, most of the initial
data logging software was written in Python and run on either
a Windows or MacOS computer, which proved to be sufficient
for lab testing. For this purpose, a high-speed USB serial link
was developed to transfer data directly from the FPGA to the
chosen computer. For mobile deployment, the same Python
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6
code can be modified to run on an embedded processor, which
could be either the Arria 10’s built-in HPS or an external
the HPS would result in a more compact system, widespread
(11)
platforms such as the Pi have several practical advantages
(e.g., low cost, availability of hardware drivers, good software
development tools, etc.). In either case, the data logging
software automatically uploads the GPR and other sensor
data to an Amazon S3 drive, where additional processing is
performed using Amazon Lambda compute resources.
In addition to the data logger, a simple Python-based user
application was developed to graphically display the acquired
data. This application can also be ported to the chosen em-
bedded processor (e.g., Arria 10 HPS or Raspberry Pi) once
initial software development and testing has been completed.
B. SerDes (serializer/deserializer):
A SerDes is a bidirectional data flow controller which, in
(12) one direction (the serializer), converts low-speed single-ended
parallel data to high-speed differential signals; and, in the other
direction (the deserializer), converts high-speed differential
signals to low-speed single-ended parallel data using a clock
and data recovery method. Here we use a high-speed SerDes
for transmitting m-sequence words serially at 3 Gbps from the
FPGA’s high-speed serial transceiver pins.
(13) Parallel data is fed to the serializer module at the rising
edges of a parallel (low-frequency) clock. A high-frequency
clock, generated using a phase-locked loop (PLL), enables the
(14) serializer to output sequentially at high-speed on both rising
and falling edges of the serial clock. For our application,
we fed the serializer with i) the m-sequence encoded as
consecutive 10-bit words at 300 MHz; and ii) a 1.5 GHz serial
clock to generate the desired pulse shape. These pulses are
further amplified by the VGA on the transmitter board, which
provides 31.5 dB of digital gain control and a maximum output
power level (defined by 1 dB gain compression) of 200 mW.
Dn
Serial Parallel
Data Data
Dn D2 D1 D0 Serializer D2
Serial Parallel D1
Clock Clock
D0
Fig. 6. Working of the serializer.
C. FPGA-ADC interface
The FPGA-ADC interface uses JESD204B, which is a
new industry-standard protocol for high-speed data transfer
(up to 12.5 Gbps) with deterministic latency between a data
converter (ADC or DAC) and a host device (FPGA or ASIC).
A simplified block diagram of this protocol is shown in Fig. 7.
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Deterministic latency
ADC 1 link, L lanes
(M SYNC~
samples)
ADC 1 link, L lanes
(M SYNC~
samples)
fS f0 fSR
Clock
generator
Fig. 7. A simplified block diagram of the JESD204B protocol (L = 8).
In the protocol, the communication between Tx and Rx
occurs in three layers. At top is the transport layer, where a
batch of samples is densely packed for efficient transmission.
In the middle (link) layer, the batch is encoded with 8b/10b
encoding to remove DC [38], scrambled, and transferred in
set of frames (multiframes) to the physical layer along with
a frame clock (f0 ) and a multiframe sysref clock (fSR ). The
encoded data travels via L gigabit lanes to the receiver. At
receiver, the received data is descrambled and decoded at the
rising edge of the sysref clock. Then, at the transport layer, the
actual samples are recovered from the link layer output. The
use of multiframes and sysref clock in this protocol ensures
synchronization, and thus, deterministic latency.
In our implementation, the data source (ADC), samples
signals from the selected receive antenna at 6 Gsps; this is
sufficient for direct digitization of the amplified echoes, since
their power spectrum is limited to ∼3 GHz. The JESD204B
core within the ADC interleaves every 40 consecutive samples
in 512-bit frames across the 8 lanes. Further, to fit 40 12-bit
samples evenly in the frame, a zero nibble is padded at the
rear in every lane. Next, every 20 consecutive frame is packed
as a multiframe. This leads to a sysref clock of frequency
6 Gsps /20 = 300 MHz, as the communication is single edge
triggered. While the throughput rate is 6 Gsps ×12 (bits)
/8 (lanes) = 9.6 Gbps, the data rate in the serial lanes is
12 Gbps due to 8b/10b encoding in the link layer.
For this application, a wide buffering mechanism was de-
signed to accommodate receiving the 40 samples of data on
every other cycle of the 300 MHz clock. The pulse-measure
acquisition scheme provides an opportunity to simplify cap-
turing the data stream. Instead of sampling data continuously,
data is only buffered during the active pulse window. This
greatly reduces the memory and processing overhead for the
acquisition front-end. For each transmitted pulse, 512 ADC
samples are captured with the pulse centered in the window. At
a rate of 6 Gsps, these samples define an acquisition window
of 85.3 ns, i.e., a round trip travel distance of 12.8 m in air.
D. Data acquisition architecture
Fig. 1 shows the GPR data acquisition and computation
pipeline architecture. Sampling at 6 GSps, the ADC generates
data far faster than the FPGA can fully process it. To deal
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7
with the data flow, the FPGA first buffers incoming data into
a wide FIFO memory. The FIFO’s input and output ports are
wide enough to store and read 40 samples of data at a time.
This parallel data is serialized into a single-sample-per-clock
data stream before being fed into the computation pipeline.
Receiver
(FPGA)
{1, for f = 0
2, for f > 0
H(f) Δ
=
fSR f0 0, for f < 0
s(t) FFT S(f)
Sample 1024-points H(f)
data Re Magnitude a(t)
IFFT
X X
1024-points Im ( ) Computed
r(t) FFT A-trace
Reference 1024-points R(f)
pattern
Correlation
Fig. 8. Implementation of the pulse compression algorithm.
A pipelined architecture was employed for the next set of
computations to increase the efficiency of averaging multiple
scan windows (also called stacking). For example, a single
scan can be processed in 14 µs (with a 300 MHz clock),
whereas 8 stacked scans can be processed in just 35 µs
due to the pipelined architecture. The amount of stacking is
limited only by the amount of memory allocated to the front-
end FIFO buffer. The implemented pipeline also has options
to average the raw data scans before the pulse compression
computation or to stack scans after the computation. Normally,
post-computation stacking is used.
The pulse compression computation first convolves the
captured pulse data s(t) with a known (i.e., reference) pulse
shape r(t) defined by the chosen m-sequence. It then estimates
the envelope of the result using a Hilbert transform. This result
is output as a single GPR A-mode trace a(t). A block diagram
of the operations is shown in Fig. 8. Both the convolution
and Hilbert transform are performed in the frequency domain
for efficiency. For example, the convolution s(t) ∗ r(t) is
replaced by the multiplication S(f )R(f ), where the spectra
S(f ) and R(f ) are computed using N -point FFTs. As
a
result, the computational complexity decreases from O N 2
to O (N log2 N ), i.e., about 100× for N = 1024. Next,
the result is converted to an single-sided spectrum using the
Hilbert filter H(f ), which removes all negative frequency
components. The inverse FFT (IFFT) of this spectrum gener-
ates a complex (analytic) time-domain signal, the magnitude
of which is defined as a(t).
The pulse compression computation was optimized for
implementation in FPGA logic by pre-computing the prod-
uct R(f )H(f ) and storing it in on-chip memory. Note that
including the Hilbert filter H(f ) within the stored reference
pattern eliminates one complex multiplication operation. The
magnitude computation uses an efficient CORDIC algorithm
to eliminate additional hardware multipliers.
After computation, the scan data doubles to 1024 points.
This data is averaged to produce a stacked A-scan result, which
is then stored in a dual-port output buffer. Stacking multiple
scans increases the SNR of the resultant scan by averaging out
uncorrelated components such as thermal noise; this leads to
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reduced RCS fluctuations and an increased depth of scan2 . The
stacked data in the output buffer is packetized and transmitted
to a data logging application running on the HPS.
The data acquisition buffers and computation pipeline were
designed to allow multiple instances (up to 8) to be instantiated
in the FPGA. Such parallel computation pipelines enable very
fast scanning and MIMO processing of multiple antenna pairs.
E. Analog front-end design
The schematics and top-down views of the transmitter
and receiver boards are shown in Fig. 9. The transmitter
has already been described; here we focus on the receiver.
The outputs of the 8 receive antennas are routed to a non-
reflective analog switch (HMC253AQS24, Analog Devices)
that has a insertion loss of 1.1 dB. The switch selects signals
from a particular antenna, and feeds them to two broadband
amplification stages. The first is a low-noise amplifier (LNA)
(TQL9063, Qorvo) with an in-band noise figure (NF) of
0.7 dB, while the second is a monolithic amplifier (VNA-25+,
Mini-Circuits) with an in-band NF of 5.5 dB. The LNA has a
bypass function that allows the receiver to reduce its gain by
∼20 dB if needed. This feature is useful for preventing the
receiver from saturating due to unavoidable direct coupling
between the transmitter and receiver arrays.
Receiver NF calculation: The noise model of the receiver
is shown in Fig 10. The amplifier is modeled as a cascade of
two-ports, with input-referred noise terms added at the input of
each stage. The resulting input-referred power spectral density
(PSD) for the LNA, N1 , and monolithic amplifier, N2 , are
N1 = kT × (F1 − 1) and N2 = kT × (F2 − 1),
where T is the system temperature, F1 is the noise factor of
the LNA, and F2 is the noise factor of the monolithic amplifier.
Note that N Fi = 10 log10 (Fi ) by definition.
The PSD (in W/Hz) of the ADC’s thermal noise and
quantization noise are estimated as
∆2
N3 = 10(kTdB +N F )/10 and Q3 =
12 × BWN yquist
where N F is the ADC’s noise figure, ∆ is its quantization step
size, and BWN yquist is the Nyquist bandwidth for the chosen
sampling rate. The receiver’s noise factor is then given by
SN Rout
Frx = (17)
SN Rin
Pin kT Lsw G1 G2 + N1 G1 G2 + N2 G2 + N3 + Q3
= × , to match the desired input impedance (50 Ω) at the center
kT Pin Lsw G1 G2
where Lsw is the attenuation (i.e., insertion loss) of the switch,
G1 is the in-band gain of the LNA, and G2 is the in-band gain
of the monolithic amplifier. Simplifying eqn. (17) gives
N1 N2 N3 + Q3
Frx = 1 + + + . (18)
kT Lsw kT Lsw G1 kT Lsw G1 G2
Finally, substituting (15) in (18) gives
F1 − 1 F2 − 1 N3 + Q3
Frx = 1 + + + . (19)
Lsw Lsw G1 kT Lsw G1 G2
2 Unfortunately, clutter is generally well-correlated across scans and thus
does not decrease with stacking.
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According to eqn. (19) and the parameters shown in Table III,
the default NF of the receiver, N Frx is 1.35 dB. NF can be
further improved to 1.13 dB by placing individual LNAs at
each antenna element before the switch. However, since the NF
improvement is relatively small, this design (which would have
∼8× higher power consumption) has not been implemented.
Additionally, the LNA can be bypassed to avoid saturating
the ADC, as mentioned earlier. However, in this case N Frx
degrades significantly to 9.25 dB. One potential solution that
can provide good NF while avoiding the ADC saturation is to
place radiation absorbers between the Tx and Rx antennas (to
reduce direct coupling) while leaving the LNA on.
TABLE III
E LECTRICAL PARAMETERS OF THE RECEIVER
Parameter Value Parameter Value
F1 1.17 G2 54.95
F2 3.55 NF of ADC (dB) 20.7
Lsw 0.78 ∆ (V) 2/212
G1 79.43 BWN yquist (GHz) 3
IV. A NTENNA S YSTEM
A. Design of the antipodal Vivaldi antenna (AVA)
The system uses antipodal Vivaldi antenna (AVA) [39], [40]
elements as they are planar, ultra-wideband (UWB), end-fire,
(15) low-cost, and easy to fabricate on circuit boards. In an AVA,
the signal is fed via a microstrip feedline with the bottom
metal acting as the ground plane, as visible in Fig. 11. Next
the signal travels through tapered metallizations on the top and
ground layers. There it resonates and radiates from different
locations at different frequencies, resulting in UWB behavior.
Since the antenna governs the directivity of the signal
radiated to the medium, it strongly influences GPR perfor-
, (16)
mance. We sought to optimize the antenna design by using
the parametrized geometry shown in Fig. 11. The parameters
shown in this figure were optimized using genetic algorithm
(GA)-based function minimization.
The geometry of the AVA is primarily made from contours
of two ellipses having radii (a1 , b1 ) and (a2 , b2 ), respectively.
Its microstrip feedline has a width wt , which is calculated
frequency fc (1.5 GHz) for the given substrate thickness
(1.5 mm). Further, the ground stripline width is assumed to be
10×wt to minimize field leakage and radiation in this region.
To simplify the optimization, we only consider parameters
that have a significant effect on the main performance pa-
rameters (return loss |S11 | and gain G) of the AVA. These
parameters, along with their definition and ranges, are listed in
Table IV. For instance, the feedline length (lf ) is not included
as a parameter, since preliminary analyses suggested that it
has little effect on performance. Rather, to reduce the number
of parameters, we chose the antenna length (l) to be equal to
its width (w) and calculated lf indirectly as lf = (w − la ).
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Tx1 Rx1
TxSel[2:0] RxSel[2:0]
Tx2 DSA[5:0] Rx2
Bypass Enable
Tx3 Rx3
Tx4 Rx4
TxIn50Ω 100Ω In+ to ADC
VGA LNA A
Tx5 In– Rx5
Tx6 Rx6
Balun
Tx7 Rx7
Tx8 Rx8
SP8T switch SP8T switch
(a) (b) (c) (d)

Fig. 9. Schematics and photographs for (a), (b) the transmitter board, and (c),(d) the receiver board.

The optimization process assumes a constraint on |S11 |.

This condition c is defined as
Q3
+ c = |S11 | < −10 dB ∀fi . (20)
+ + + ADC
Lsw + +
+
G1,F1 G2,F2 Here the fi ’s denote frequencies from 0.75-2.25 GHz in steps
R
N1 N2 N3 of 0.1 GHz. Further, we sought to maximize the average
antenna gain, and defined this objective by minimizing a cost
Vn2 = 4KTR
function (z) defined as
X
z=− G(fi )dB . (21)
Fig. 10. Receiver noise model (L = 8).
The antenna S11 and gain values were obtained using the
Sonnet R
EM simulator. The latter was run from a MATLAB
genetic algorithm (GA) optimization script that chose a set
of antenna optimization parameters, designed an antenna,
w simulated it using Sonnet, and chose the next set of antenna
parameters based on simulation results. This process was
iterated in the script until the cost function converged.
Ground
plane During initial optimization runs, we found that the feasible
la region (where the constraint c is satisfied) is highly fragmented
in the 4-D parameter hyperspace, leading to convergence
b1 issues. Thus, to extend the feasible region, we modified the
a2
l constraint function to c = |S11 | < −8 dB ∀fi , though this
(w-wt)/2 increases the maximum return loss to ∼16%. Further, we
Ellipse 1 incorporated a Latin hypercube sampling (LHS) based search
wt space reduction method [41] to address the convergence issues.
The LHS method generates a defined number of random
Ellipse 2 samples (here, sets of parameters) that are almost evenly
10wt distributed over the sample space. To find the approximate
feasible region in the hyperspace, the modified constraint
Fig. 11. The proposed parametrized geometry of the AVA. is checked on these samples, and the feasible regions are
contoured. Afterward, the optimization is performed on the
feasible region to find the parameter set that minimizes z (i.e.,
maximizes the average gain). A photograph of the resultant
antenna with parameter values is shown in Fig. 12. The
TABLE IV measured return loss and gain are plotted in Fig. 13.
A NTIPODAL V IVALDI ANTENNA : O PTIMIZATION PARAMETERS
This parametrized AVA design method simplifies the an-
Parameter Description Range tenna optimization process. It can be extended to design
optimum AVAs for other bands, as well as to design other
w Antenna width (a1 = (w − wt )/2) 10 − 20 cm
antennas whose geometry can be parametrized.
la Antenna taper length 10 − 17 cm
k1 b1 to a1 ratio (ellipse 1) 0.1 − 1
B. Antenna array assembly
k2 b2 to a2 ratio (ellipse 2) 0.1 − 1
Assembling the proposed AVA elements into the Tx and
Rx arrays poses certain mechanical challenges. In particular,

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15.42 cm (w)
RX1 RX2 RX3 RX4 RX5 RX6 RX7 RX8

0.60 (k2)
TX1 TX2 TX3 TX4 TX5 TX6 TX7 TX8

9.14 cm (la)

0.48 (k1)

15.42 cm Fig. 14. The proposed 8 × 2 antenna array assembly. The top plate is metal
(aluminum), while the bottom plates are plastic (PVC).
0.30 cm (wt)

C. Antenna array measurements

The measured return loss |S11 | of the 16 AVAs within a
fully-assembled array are shown as grey lines in Fig. 15. The
thick red line represents the average of these curves, while
Fig. 12. Photograph of the proposed antenna design. the dotted blue line is the return loss of an isolated AVA.
The difference between these lines is a measure of antenna
0 performance loss due to both inter-element coupling (the
-5
dominant cause) and also mechanical structures in the array
-8 dB
-10
assembly. In particular, the −8 dB bandwidth of the isolated
|S11| (dB)

-15
AVA extends as low as 0.6 GHz, while the assembled antennas
have significant return loss between 0.6-1.5 GHz. This reduces
-20
the transmitted output power for a Manchester-encoded pulse
-25
(−3 dB bandwidth of 0.62-1.66 GHz) by ∼30%. The amount
-30
0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 of power loss can be reduced by spacing the antenna elements
Frequency (GHz)
further apart, but at the cost of reduced lateral resolution.
(a)

8
0
6
Antenna gain (dB)

-5
4
-10
2

0 -15
|S11| (dB)

-2 -20

-4 -25
0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3
Frequency (GHz)
-30
m-sequence -3dB bandwidth
(b)
-35
Fig. 13. Measured (a) return loss, and (b) gain for the optimized AVA. Average S11 of 16 antennas
-40
S11 of a standalone antenna
-45
0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3
the assembly should be robust to the vibrations expected Frequency (GHz)

in a moving vehicle without significantly affecting antenna

performance. The proposed solution is shown in Fig. 14. The
Tx-Rx antennas are configured in a 8 × 2 matrix, with 8
Tx antennas and 8 Rx antennas placed in two parallel rows
and pointing downward. The top plate (made of aluminum)
provides overall mechanical support and also acts as a ground
shield. The antennas are then sandwiched between two plastic
(PVC) plates; the bottom one is visible as the blue plate in
Fig. 14, while the top one is screwed into the ground shield.
Each plate has has machined slits to hold the AVAs in place
and minimize vibrations during scans. The plates are also
connected together by plastic (Nylon) rods to further reduce
vibrations. Holes in the ground shield allow coaxial cables to
connect the array to the transmitter and receiver boards, which
are mounted on top of it. The mechanical assembly of the GPR
system is discussed in more detail in Section V.
Fig. 15. Effect of antenna array on the S11 measurement.
V. GPR S YSTEM D ESIGN
A. System enclosure
The GPR system is assembled within a 51 × 41 × 28 cm
fiberglass reinforced polyester (FRP) enclosure (L-com, North
Andover, MA). The FRP is chosen to provide enough protec-
tion for outdoor use while also allowing the transmitted pulses
and echoes to pass through without much reflection loss.
The enclosure is subdivided into two compartments (top and
bottom) by the ground shield. The top compartment contains
the electronics (SoC, embedded processor, transmitter/receiver,
ADC, and power management), which are discussed in more

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detail in the next subsection. The bottom compartment con-

tains i) the 8 × 2 antenna array, and four 6 V 12 Ah sealed
Arria 10 SoC ADC EVM
lead-acid (SLA) batteries that are stacked to generate ±12 V.

B. System-level hardware design

Rx PCB
The overall hardware design can be divided into three main
subsystems: i) GPR, including Tx-Rx boards and the SoC; ii) Tx PCB Pi

power management; and iii) data logging, as shown in Fig. 16.

Two system design iterations have been completed. The first
version was intended for in-lab and on-campus experiments. It Power
Management PCB
includes the GPR, but not the data logging subsystem. Instead,
B-scan data is directly streamed through a high-speed USB
serial interface to a laptop. In addition, the power subsystem Fig. 17. Photograph of a fully-assembled GPR system (second version).
uses i) off-the-shelf voltage regulators to run the transmitter,
receiver, and ADC off a benchtop DC power supply, and ii) a
AC-DC converter “brick” to run the SoC development board VI. E XPERIMENTAL R ESULTS
(Terasic, Taiwan) off a 120 V AC outlet.
This section describes various experiments that were used
The second version, shown in Figs. 16 and 17 and Fig. 16,
to validate the functionality of the proposed GPR system.
is intended for standalone on-road GPR testing using the
SLA batteries. The power subsystem (voltage regulators and
battery monitor) and data logging subsystem are assembled A. In-lab experiments
on a separate board. The monitor measures battery voltage
and load current, and turns off the system when the voltage
drops below a user-defined threshold to prevent hardware
GPR
damage due to brownout events. The data logger contains two
main computational resources: a Teensy 3.6 microcontroller
(MCU) board and a Raspberry Pi 3B. The Teensy acquires
data from additional sensors, namely i) location data from
~85cm

a GPS module, ii) vibration and motion data from a nine-

axis inertial measurement unit (IMU), and iii) the enclosure
temperature, and sends these to the Raspberry Pi. Each data

8cm
frame is validated using a cyclic redundancy check (CRC),
and validated data is written to a file. The Pi waits for a
specific Wi-Fi connection, which is normally available when
the vehicle returns to its garage at the end of the day, and Fig. 18. Horizontal view of the in-lab experiment.
then uploads the acquired data file to an Amazon S3 drive
through its built-in Wi-Fi module. Battery run time in active Setup: Fig. 18 shows a simple in-lab experiment imple-
logging mode (GPR subsystem ‘on’) and standby mode (GPR mented to quickly check the functionality of the radar. For
subsystem ‘off’) are ∼6 hours and > 50 hours, respectively. this purpose, the GPR box was placed on top of a plastic cart
∼85 cm above the floor. A small copper pipe with a length
GPR of 30 cm and a diameter of 8 cm was rolled under the GPR
Battery 12 VDC

6V 6V
Monitoring box at constant speed. This experiment guarantees that the B-
FMC A

6V 6V
6 VDC
TX
scan data is not affected by the inhomogeneous characteristics
FPGA of the floor, while still replicating the relative movement
5 VDC
FMC B

Power ADC between object (pipe) and GPR expected during vehicle-
Power regulator and RX USB Serial

sensors board
Adapter mounted operation. The transmit pulses were Manchester-
Temp
Sensor GPS
encoded with a total length of 14 bits3 ; each pulse had a
IMU
USB Serial
Raspberry
duration of 4.67 ns. The LNA was bypassed to reduce receiver
Adapter

SPI UART
Pi 3B gain, which prevents ADC saturation but also degrades the NF.
Pi GPIO
Wifi Additionally, to reduce data acquisition complexity, only
ADC

current Teensy 3.6 40 pins

Module
voltage USB
USB
four antenna pairs at the center were used. In particular, coded
Data Logging pulses were transmitted and received at pairs (3, 3) to (6, 6),
which are defined as channels 3-6, respectively.
Fig. 16. Block diagram of the standalone GPR system.
3 Note that Manchester encoding doubles the number of bits in each pulse;
thus, these 14-bit pulses were generated from a 7-bit m-sequence.

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x
z channel 3
0.6
25 Hyperbola Fitting
0.5
37.5
0.4
50

y
0.3
62.5

Scan Depth (cm)

0.2
75
0.1
87.5
0
100
-0.1
112.5
-0.2
125
-0.3
137.5
-0.4
150
-60 -30 0 30 60 -60
Pipe Location (cm)

(a) (b)

Fig. 19. (a) Measured B-scan data of a copper pipe rolling on the floor. The x-axis denotes pipe position, with zero being directly underneath the GPR. The
y-axis denotes range to the object, as estimated from the measured time delay. The z-axis denotes data in four different channels. (b) Measured B-scan data
of channel 3, along with the theoretical hyperbolic curve.

Results: The B-scan data acquired from the four channels

after mean subtraction is summarized in Fig. 19. The hyper-
bolic curves visible in all four antenna pairs confirm that the
GPR can localize the moving object. The calibrated scan depth
at the top of each hyperbola occurs around 75 cm, which is in
good agreement with the actual minimum distance from the
bottom of the GPR box to the top of the pipe.

B. Lateral scan experiments

Setup: The use of a MIMO antenna array allows the GPR
to provide lateral resolution perpendicular to the motion di-
rection. Such information (here, along the z-axis) can be used
to distinguish between objects with different cross-sections,
orientations, etc. As an example, we generated lateral scans
for two objects with different geometries. The chosen objects
were i) a flat rectangular metal plate of dimension 48×32 cm,
and ii) a cylindrical metal trash can with a diameter of
30 cm, placed horizontally. The m-sequence used to scan both
objects was Manchester-encoded and had a length of 126 bits,
corresponding to a duration of 42 ns.
During the experiment, the GPR was raised at 1.1 m above
floor level, such that the top surfaces of the metal plate and
trash can were ∼50 cm and ∼80 cm below the bottom of the
box, respectively. Next, A-scan data from all 8 channels was
acquired and stacked horizontally to generate lateral scans of
each object. The resulting 2-D data sets were converted into
smoothed images via linear interpolation (in the horizontal
direction) and spatial low-pass filtering.
Results: Lateral scan data for the flat object (the metal plate)
is shown in Fig. 20(a). The detected profile is linear but not
completely horizontal because of placement errors. Data for
the curved object (the trash can) is shown in Fig. 20(b). The
theoretical cross-section (a circle of radius r ≈ 12 cm) is
also shown on this figure for comparison. The detected profile
clearly shows a circular cross-section; this is generated by
diffraction of the GPR pulses around the object, followed by
reflection from both top and bottom surfaces. Thus, the lateral
resolution provided by the antenna array allows the two objects
can be clearly distinguished even in the absence of motion.
(a) (b)
Fig. 20. Measured lateral scans of (a) a flat metal plate, and (b) a trash can.
Adjacent antenna channels are separated by 5 cm.
C. Outdoor experiments
Setup: To further study the performance of the GPR, an
outdoor test site was constructed within the CWRU campus.
The site consists of several objects buried at various depths in
moderately wet soil, as listed in Table V. Briefly, these objects
were of two types: metal objects and plastic bottles. Some of
the bottles were filled with water, while others were empty to
simulate voids.
The GPR measurement was implemented as follows. The
GPR box was placed on the bottom shelf of a plastic cart,
which is 15 cm above the ground. The cart was placed on
wooden rails and then moved with respect to the buried
objects, as shown in Fig. 21. As in earlier experiments, the
LNA was bypassed. Also, the transmit pulses had a length of
126 bits after Manchester encoding.
Results: The measured B-mode scans of one buried object

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Laptop and innovations in this work include i) a highly-digital system

Power Supply
architecture based on a modern SoC; ii) direct generation of
ultra-wideband coded transmit pulses by the FPGA; iii) direct
digitization of received echoes by an ultra-high-speed ADC;
and iv) numerical optimization of parametrically-defined an-
GPR tipodal Vivaldi antenna elements. The GPR system, along
with data logging and power management subsystems, were
integrated within a water-resistant enclosure to enable vehicle-
mounted operation for roadway monitoring.
Buried
Object
Future work will focus on i) field trials of the standalone
(30cm
depth)
vehicle-mounted system, and ii) improved signal processing
and machine learning methods to detect, localize, and classify
subsurface objects from 2-D and 3-D data sets.
Fig. 21. Experimental setup used for outdoor experiments.

TABLE V
P ROPERTIES OF THE BURIED OBJECTS
Material Dimensions (cm)
DICL pipe Length: 30, diameter: 17
Copper pipe Length: 30, diameter: 8
Metal pipe Length: 28, diameter: 17
Rectangular plate Length: 26, width: 24
Rectangular plate Length: 26, width: 24
Plastic bottle (air) Volume: 1.89 liter
Plastic bottle (water) Volume: 1.89 liter
(a rectangular metal plate 26 × 24 cm in size, buried at a
depth of 30 cm) acquired from four antenna pairs are shown
in Fig. 22 (a); data from the other objects is not shown due
to lack of space. The width of the plate is smaller than that
of the array, so the signals from the middle four antenna pairs
are the strongest. The hyperbolic curves visible in these scans
show that the GPR can detect the buried object. The top of
each hyperbola occurs around 30 cm, which matches the actual
depth of the rectangular plate. Fig. 22 (b) shows the B-mode
scan of channel 3, along with the best-fitting hyperbolic curve.
The latter agrees with a theoretical model of time delay versus
GPR position x if we assume the soil has a dielectric constant
of r = 4, as expected from Table II.
D. Performance comparison
Table VI compares the performance of the presented GPR
with other systems (both commercially available and in the
research literature). Only our system and [19] take advantage
of high TBP to reduce peak RF power requirements (26 dBm
in our system and 15 dBm in [19]) and achieve good scan
depths while maintaining high range resolution. Additionally,
our system is the only one with a flexible highly-digital
architecture that supports both software-programmable pulse
generation and direct RF digitization.
VII. C ONCLUSION
This paper has described the design, realization, and ex-
perimental validation of a MIMO GPR system. The key
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank i) Sam Cordaro and the
CWRU Engineering Services Fabrication Center for design
Depth (cm) and fabrication of the water-resistant system box, and ii)
50
Nicholas Barendt, Raghav Rao, John Gibbons, and David Jarvi
for assistance with system assembly and testing. This work
50
was supported in part by the Institute for Smart, Secure and
50 Connected Systems (ISSACS) with funding provided to the
30 Internet of Things Collaborative by the Cleveland Foundation
50 and the Cleveland Regional Transit Authority (RTA).
50
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This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/TIM.2020.2984415, IEEE
Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INSTRUMENTATION AND MEASUREMENT, VOL. XX, NO. XX, OCTOBER 2019 14

x
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2.5

30 2

y
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42.5

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1
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GPR Position (cm) GPR Position (cm)

(a) (b)

Fig. 22. (a) Measured B-scan data of a a plate buried in soil at a depth of 30 cm. The x-axis denotes GPR position, with zero being directly above the
center of the object. The y-axis denotes range to the object, as estimated from the measured time delay. The z-axis denotes data in four different channels.
(b) Measured B-scan data of channel 3, along with the best-fitting hyperbolic curve.

TABLE VI
C OMPARISON WITH THE STATE - OF - THE - ART

Parameter This work [21] [22] [19] [13] [42]

Name - pulseEKKO
R
RoadScanTM 30 - LGPR Proceq GPR Live
Excitation Coded-pulsed Analog-pulsed Analog-pulsed FMCW SFCW SFCW
Configuration 8 channels Bistatic Bistatic Bistatic 11 channels Bistatic
Nominal frequency 0.7-2.3 GHz Multiple configs. 1 GHz, 2 GHz 0.6-4.6 GHz 100-400 MHz 0.2-4 GHz
(in 12.5 MHz to 1 GHz)
Antenna Antipodal Vivaldi Resistive dipole - Horn - -
Power consumption ∼36 W1/∼44 W2 4.2 W <260 W - - -
Acquisition time 85.3 ns - - - - 20 ns
Programmable Tx Yes No No Yes No No
pulses
Range resolution ∼3.3 cm3 Config. dependent - 1.32 cm5 20-30 cm Varied
Maximum depth ∼1 m4 - 0.9 m 30 cm6 2-3 m 0.7 m
1 GPR subsystem only.
2 GPR standalone system.
3 Assuming medium soil.
4 Assuming medium soil, pulse length = 63 bits (N = 6), Arcs = 100 cm2 , PFA < 10−4 .
5 Estimated in medium soil.
5 Mentioned targeted value.

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