Development of Signal Processing Methods for Imaging Buned Pipes

A new imaging technique for subsurface radars is described for reconstructing clear images of buried pipes in soil. The method developed has two signal processing stages; preprocessing and aperture synthesis. The preprocessing extracts signals scattered from the pipes by reducing clutter noise. The synthetic-aperture processing analyzes only the scattered signals derived by the first stage and reconstructs high-quality images in a short processing time. The imaging technique developed was successfully applied to the imaging of actual buried metallic pipes. It was experimentally confirmed that the new imaging method was capable of reconstructing clear images in a short time without losing image quality.