Effect of the data pre-processing on GPR mine detector performance

The performance of GPR as an anti-personal mine (APM) detector heavily depends on the quality of the acquired data. A scheme of the quantitative evaluation of the quality of the raw GPR data in terms of stability of certain parameters and the set of the procedures, which compensate the instabilities found are presented. We demonstrate the performance of the data pre-processing chain (DPPC), which includes spectral filtering of A-scans, control of the mutual alignment of B-scans, and time and voltage axis´s instabilities compensation in the whole C-scan. The performance of the DPPC is judged both in terms of the stabilization of certain statistical parameters of the data, and by its effect on the receiver operation characteristics (ROC) curve