ADVANCED POLARIMETRIC SUBSURFACE FM-CW RADAR

The subsurface radar suffers from two typical problems, i.e., strong c lutter from surface and severe wave attenuation in the underground. Th is paper presents a unique countermeasure to these problems using a po larimetric FM-CW radar and an equivalent sensitivity time control (STC ) technique. We apply the polarimetric filtering principle to suppress surface clutter either in the Co-pol channel or in the X-pol channel of synthetic aperture radar, yielding to polarimetric enhanced target image. This technique works when the surface clutter and target have d ifferent polarization properties. Moreover, we use an equivalent STC t echnique specially suited for FM-CW radar for a deep object sounding t o compensate wave attenuation within the ground, These techniques cont ribute to a significant improvement of the radar performance and the d etection image contrast, although the detection of the target is in ge neral a much more complicated topic. The field experiments were carrie d out to show the usefulness of the method. Some detection results are presented.