SYNTHETIC RADARGRAMS FROM ELECTRICAL-CONDUCTIVITY AND MAGNETIC-PERMEABILITY VARIATIONS

The objective of this work is to assess the importance of electrical c onductivity and magnetic permeability variations in ground penetrating radar (GPR) reflections commonly interpreted only in terms of permitt ivity variations. We use the matrix propagator approach to obtain the surface electric field associated with a horizontally layered model wh ose three electromagnetic properties vary from layer to layer. The sol ution is based on the plane wave boundary value problem using inverse Fourier transformation to accommodate particular GPR pulses. Our resul ts indicate that while magnetic permeability is unimportant, reflectio ns from electrical conductivity variations can be of the same order as those associated with electrical permittivity boundaries. In particul ar, we show that a realistic ground model composed of thin conductive layers can produce radargrams similar to those caused by a lossless pe rmittivity contrast.