Rsearch-110876A8 Underground sensing is of interest in many applications, to find buried objects, fresh water layers, minerals, chemicals and

possibly mines. Due to high attenua tion in most soils, microwave-based underground sensing is most appropriate. My work was absolutely inclined to sensing of the depth of water layer, i.e detecti ng the soil water interface. A Subsurface radar or ground-penetrating radar (GPR) is used in detection of bur ried objects below ground. The concept of (GPR) has been in research since the early 20th century. This tec hniques offers rapid, high resolution investigation of underground objects and s tructures by recording microwave radiation that passes through the ground and is returned to the surface from several underground layers or objects. Im a typical GPR, a transmitter sends a microwave signal into the subsurface whi ch will be reflected by the buried objects or interfaces beneath the earth s surfa ce. The microwaves propagate at velocities that are dependent upon the dielectri c constant of the subsurface medium. Changes in the dielectric constant that are due to changes in the subsurface materials cause the radar wave to be reflected . The time taken for the energy to return to the surface is related to the depth at which the energy was reflected. Thus interpretation of this reflected energ y yields information on structural variation of the subsurface amd also depth ca n be calculated from time elapsed between the transmission. I was influenced to work in this field after reading a German patent by Leimbach and Lowy. They were the very first level of scientists to work in the design of a GPR and publish research papers. Their technique consisted of burying dipole antennas in an array of vertical boreholes and comparing the magnitude of signa ls received when successive pairs were used to transmit and receive. The basic operation involves transmitting a modulated signal over the ground and receiving the signals reflected or scattered from the layers below the ground. Then received signal is sampled and processed using several sgnal processing tec hniques and later analyzed. Since the received signal is random and discritized for processing, advanced statistical analysis is required to process the signal. The selection of antenna is very critical for proper signal analysis. A number o f factors starting from the approx. depth of penetration, type of objects to ide ntify, i.e their electromagnetic properties, the optimum operating frequency, et c must be considered before selecting the desired antenna. The problem is smalle r the wavelength, the better the resolution. So very high frequency signal needs to be used but the higher frequency signals will not penetrate as deep as the l ower frequencies. Limitizing the operating in the 100 MHz to 1 GHz frequency range considering the purpose a penetration depth of about 2 to 3 meters can be acheived into the dif ferent types of soils. I have used a bow-tie antennaas which is a linearly pola rized ultra wide band antenna. Its plane reflector has both a respectable bandwi dth and a large front to back ratio. The antenna is formed by two metallic patch es with bow-tie shape, and two parallel stripes which run between the bow -tie t ips, and are finally connected to the metallic patches The dielectric constant, i.e, the measure of the ability of a material to store a charge from an applied electromagnetic field and then transmit that energy is an important parameter in detection. The refected signals from different layers of the ground with varing dielcetric constants are scattered signals. Thus a scatterging parameter or scattering matr

ix is an important parmeter in signal reception. Scattering parameters, are common ly referred to as s-parameters, are a parameter set that relates to the travelin g waves that are scattered or reflected when an n-port network is inserted into a transmission line. The scattering parameter is the ratio of the reflected volt age over the incident voltage (i.e., reflection coefficient). The objective is to accurately determine the distance of the reflecting surface from the probe. An important advantage of s-parameters stems from the fact that traveling waves, unlike terminal voltages and currents, do not vary in magnitude at points along a lossless transmission line. This means that s-parameters can be measured on a device located at some distance from the measurement transducers, provided tha t the measuring device and the transducers are connected by low-loss transmissio n lines. As the S-parameter gives an easy measure of the ratio of the reflected and incid ent wave power, this value can be very easily used to detect the presence of an y buried object or interface of water layer or any other discontinuity of dielec tric parameter buried underground. The most important part is the signal processing. Advanced data accusation and signal processing techniques are needed for these purposes. In our study the bas ic objective was to detect the presence of the water layer. So we did not opt fo r imaging of subsurface features. We simulated for some known cases with and wit hout the water layer. Now the simulated results were used as signatures. Any dat a collected for cases, where it is not known whether water layer is present unde r the ground or not, can be compared with the signatures using signal processing techniques to d ecide about the presence or absence of the water layer. A very efficient mathematical tool to detect whether two set of datas are simila r in nature or not is Correlation.The degree of association or the strength of r elationship between thethe two bivariate variable datas x , y assumed by the bi variate (X,Y) is called the correlation between the two random variables X and Y . If y has a tendency to increase as x increases or vice-versa, we say x and y are positively correlated. Again if y has a tendency to decrease as x decreases or vice-versa, we say x and y are negatively correlated. If the values of x or y are not affected by the changes in the values of y or x, then we say x and y are uncorrelated or zero correlated. Thus a measurement of the amount of correlation between two variables becomes n ecessary to get the idea of association or similarity between two variables. Ano ther powerful mathematical tool called the Pearson s Product Moment Correlation C oefficient or simply Correlation Coefficient is used. It is obtained by dividing the convergence of 2 signals with the product of thei r SD. For simulation of the practical senario we have used tools like WIPL-D and CST M icrowave Studio. Various antennas were designed for testing in WIPL-D and the Sparameter was studies with objects of various dielectrics at various depth below ground. The correlation technique of studing and comparing signals were optimis ed using Matlab with a predefined signal considering noise and impact of other d ielctics substances. The results from Matlab were used as samples for defined co nditions of ground surface.

In real world applications several noises would be encountered due to the presen ce of other microwave devices working in the same band. Again reflections may oc cur from the presence of the surveyor himself. Advanced modulation and demodulat ion techniques like CDMA need to be realized to negate the effect of the noises as much as possible. We can also create a large data base of several signatures with different condit ions, different heights and different targets. Then advanced imaging algorithms like genetic algorithm, imaging techniques can be used to detect unknown objects or layers and to image the subsurface features in 3-D or 2-D with higher resolu tion.