Design and experimental study of an ultra-wideband radar system

Among technologies used for ground penetrating radar (GPR), ultra-wideband (UWB) is an attractive choice thanks to its ability to provide high data rate transmission and high detection resolution. Nowadays, many such systems are offered in the world market, but their prices are usually very high. In this paper, we present an inexpensive ultra-wideband GPR designed and tested at our Microwave Lab, focusing on design, simulation and measurement of antennas, theoretical and experimental study of the system detection ability for various forms and locations of objects under test. As a result, quite high resolution (less than 1 cm) was obtained that shows promising performance of the system to be used for detection of defects in constructional structures in civil engineering.