SVD-based Clutter Removal Technique for GPR
Maria Garcia-Fernandez, Yuri Alvarez-Lopez, Yolanda Rodriguez-Vaqueiro, Borja Gonzalez-Valdes,
Ana Arboleya-Arboleya, Fernando Las-Heras
Area of Signal Theory, University of Oviedo
Campus Viesques, Modulo 8, 33203 Gijon, Spain
mariagarcia@tsc.uniovi.es
Abstract—The main goal of this contribution is to present
a clutter reduction technique for Ground Penetrating Radar
(GPR) imaging. The proposed technique is based on a subspace
projection method applied to the focused Synthetic Aperture
Radar (SAR) image. It consists of decomposing the image in
its different eigenimages and classifying them as belonging to
clutter, target or noise subspaces. Several scenarios have been
simulated in order to test this technique and its performance has
been measured analyzing the variation in the Signal-to-Clutter
Ratio (SCR). In addition, it has been compared with background
subtraction and other subspace projection methods.
I. I NTRODUCTION
Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) is a well-known technique
for non-invasive detection of metallic and dielectric buried
targets [1]. This is possible due to the different constitutive
parameters of targets and soil. Nevertheless, one of the main
issues of imaging buried objects is the strong clutter produced
by the specular reflection from the ground surface. Several
clutter rejection methods, such as time-gating, average mean
subtraction and subspace projection methods, among others,
have been proposed to overcome this issue in subsurface [2]
and through-wall imaging [3].
Subspace projection methods, such as Singular Value De-
composition (SVD), estimate the clutter subspace and then
project the B-scan data (i.e. the 2D raw measures) orthogonally
onto this subspace. It has been assumed that the first eigen-
image represents the clutter and the second one the target [4].
However, both clutter and targets can span a multidimensional
subspace, depending on the surface roughness, soil composi-
tion, size, location and number of targets, etc.
In this contribution, a subspace projection method is applied
to the focused Underground - Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR)
image, instead of to the B-scan data (which helps to reduce
the dimensionality of surface and target subspaces). The
proposed method classifies each eigenimage as belonging to
clutter, target or noise subspaces. Two dimensional Method of
Moments (2D-MoM) simulations are used to test the proposed
method.
II. M ETHODOLOGY
A. Underground-SAR imaging
The measured scattered field has been focused using an
Underground-SAR technique that takes into account the dif-
ferent wave velocities in the air and in the soil (provided the
978-1-5386-3284-0/17/$31.00 ©2017 IEEE 2369
Antonio Pino-Garcia
AtlanTIC Research Center, University of Vigo
Esc. Ing. Telecomunicaciones, 36310 Vigo, Spain
yrvaqueiro@com.uvigo.es
constitutive parameters are known or estimated). Assuming
a multi-monostatic scenario where the scattered field Es is
measured at Nf frequencies on No observation points, the
reflectivity at point r0 is calculated as follows:
Nf No
X X
ρ(r0 ) = Es (fn , rm ) exp(+j2(φ1 + φ2 )) (1)
n=1 m=1
where φ1 is the phase shift of the propagation between the
antenna position rm and the refraction point at the soil surface
ri , and φ2 is the phase shift between ri and r0 [5].
B. SVD
A rectangular matrix X, whose dimensions are M ×N (with
M ≥ N ), can be decomposed using SVD as X = U ΣV H ,
where U and V are M × M and N × N unitary matrices
that contain the left and right singular vectors, Σ is a diagonal
matrix that contains the singular values of X in descending
order (σ1 ≥ σ2 ≥ ...), and H refers to the Hermitian transpose.
According to this decomposition, X can be expressed as
the sum of the N eigenimages, where the ith eigenimage is
Mi = ui σi viH . Therefore, the goal of the subspace projection
method is to find the subsets of eigenimages that compose the
clutter, target and noise subspaces.
C. Subspace Projection Method
The first step of the method is to estimate the distance
between the observation domain and the ground surface hsoil .
Once the average B-scan in the space-domain rav is computed,
hsoil is estimated as the location of its global maximum. The
radar returns at a distance smaller than the threshold th =
hsoil +λmax /2 (where λmax is the maximum wavelength) are
considered to correspond to the air and the air-soil interface.
Next, the B-scan data is focused using the Underground-
SAR imaging method and the SVD of the obtained image
is computed. The singular values that correspond to the 99%
of the total power (where the power represented by the ith
singular value is σi /tr(Σ)) are considered to belong to clutter
and target subspaces, whereas the other singular values are
assumed to belong to the noise subspace and are discarded.
For each remaining eigenimage, the location of its maximum
hmax is found. If the position of this maximum lies within
the air-soil interface area (hmax ≤ th), this eigenimage is
classified as belonging to the clutter subspace. Otherwise, it
is assumed that it belongs to the target subspace.
AP-S 2017
 TABLE I
In order to measure the performance of the method, the C HANGE IN SCR (G) FOR DIFFERENT CLUTTER REDUCTION TECHNIQUES .
change in Signal-to-Clutter Ratio (SCR) after applying the Scenario Target GBS [dB] GP [dB] GI [dB] GB [dB]
clutter reduction technique is computed (2). The value of SCR
Metallic 10.5 6.8 5.9 5.5
is given by (3) where At is the target region (i.e. the pixels (a)
Dielectric 25.1 22.1 11.7 10.8
where the target is placed), Ac is the rest of the image, and Nt (b)
Metallic 10.1 6.4 5.3 4.9
and Nc are the number of pixels in At and Ac , respectively. Dielectric 14.2 13.3 9.0 8.6
Metallic 11.2 7.9 4.7 3.2
(c)
Dielectric 25.7 16.3 5.4 4.2
 
SCRwith clutter reduction
G [dB] = 10 log (2) (d)
Metallic 18.9 14.5 13.8 13.0
SCRinitial Dielectric 31.8 28.9 17.3 15.9
1 2
P
N (x,z)∈At |ρ(x, z)|
SCR = 1t P 2
(3)
Nc (x,z)∈Ac |ρ(x, z)|

III. R ESULTS
Several scenarios have been simulated to analyze the be-
haviour of the proposed method. Unless otherwise stated,
the following parameters are considered: frequency ranges
from 3.5 to 5.5 GHz (sampled every 20 MHz), the observation
domain is a straight line 50 cm above the surface sampled
every 2.5 cm (∼ 0.5λmin ), the soil constitutive parameters are
r,soil = 3 and σsoil = 0.05 S/m and the target is a 19 × 2 cm2
rectangular object buried 10 cm below the surface. Standard
deviation of the surface roughness is 1 cm and measurements
are contaminated with white gaussian noise resulting in a
Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) of 30 dB. Both metallic and
dielectric targets (with r,target = 4.5) have been considered.
The proposed method has been compared with Background
Subtraction (BS) and with the removal of the first eigenimage
in the SAR image and in the B-scan data (as proposed in
literature). BS is the ideal clutter removal technique but it
requires accurately know the field scattered by the soil without
targets (not available in real applications). Table I shows the
change in the SCR for all these techniques (GBS , GI and GB ,
respectively), as well as for the proposed technique (GP ).
In the initial scenario, named (a), when the metallic target
is present, the first eigenimage belongs to clutter subspace
whereas the second one belongs to target subspace. Due to
the high reflectivity of the metallic target, the elimination
of just the first eigenimage is almost as effective as the
proposed method. However, when the target is dielectric, the
first two eigenimages belong to the clutter subspace. Hence,
the removal of the first eigenimage is not enough to properly
detect the target. In this case, the proposed method is much
more effective than the removal of the first eigenimage.
In the second scenario, denoted as (b), the SNR is decreased
to 10 dB to test the influence of noise. In this case, the
proposed method is also closer to the background subtraction
technique than the other subspace projection methods.
In scenario (c), the surface roughness standard deviation is
increased to 3 cm. This increase yields a higher dimensional
clutter subspace. When the target is dielectric, the improve-
ment of the proposed method is particularly noticeable. Fig. 1
shows the original image as well as the one obtained with the
proposed method, background subtraction and with removing
the first eigenimage in SAR domain.
Finally, in scenario (d), the target shape and size is changed
to a circular object with radius 2 cm.
2370
(a) Without clutter reduction (b) Background Subtraction
(c) Proposed method (d) Removing first eigenimage
Fig. 1. Images of scenario (c) with a buried dielectric target.
IV. C ONCLUSIONS
The power is more widespread among the different eigen-
images in the B-scan decomposition than in the SAR image,
which is in agreement with the fact that GI > GB in all
scenarios. When the target is metallic, the performance of
the proposed method is usually similar to just removing the
first eigenimage. However, when the target is dielectric, the
proposed method is notably better (GP >> GI ).
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
This work has been partially supported by Spain government
under projects TEC2014-54005-P and TEC2014-55290-JIN,
and grant FPU15/06341; by Asturias government under project
GRUPIN14-114; and by Galicia government under projects
CN2012/279, CN20127260 and Plan I2C (2011-2015).
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