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Article history:
Received 2 September 2013
Received in revised form
13 February 2014
Accepted 23 March 2014
Available online 2 April 2014
This work presents a methodology for solving the inverse problem of thickness and permittivity
determination in multilayer problems by using ground penetrating radar (GPR) data. Its main
contribution is to express the inverse problem as well-posed or, similarly, to formulate an error function
with only one global minimum under practical conditions. This result is achieved by establishing the
maximum allowed GPR operation frequency. With the analysis shown in this paper, the complex inverse
problems of multilayer parameters estimation are better understood and the algorithm for minimization
of the error function can be better selected. Therefore, it can reduce results error and decrease the time
for obtaining a solution. The new methodology is tested on two typical situations showing the accuracy
of the proposed method.
& 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords:
Ground penetrating radar
Non-destructive testing
Automatic parameter estimation
Multilayer problem
Pavement
1. Introduction
Ground penetrating radar (GPR) is a common tool used for nondestructive testing. It is based on sending an electromagnetic wave
into a dielectric medium and measuring the reections due to its
inhomogeneities. It is used in several areas of knowledge such as
geophysics (e.g. analysis of rocks and soils, search of minerals,
measurement of sedimentation in rivers), archaeology (e.g. search
of buried objects and traces of civilizations), and civil engineering
(e.g. evaluation of conditions in structures such as buildings,
bridges) [1].
The estimation of thicknesses and physical properties of
layered media is a classic problem for GPR evaluation [2] and it
has a direct application in the analysis of roads. The evaluation of
the pavement properties is an important step for certifying that
the construction was done according to the project, and, also, to
measure its degradation. However, few companies supervisory use
GPR in their routine, mainly due to the difculty of analyzing a
large amount of measurements [3]. In this context, automatic tools
are of great importance.
Several papers approach the calculation of thickness in multilayer problems using the GPR by methods that detect the instant
when the reected pulses occur, estimating the thickness based
on the wave traveling time in each medium [3,4]. To detect the
n
presence of reected pulses, peak detectors [3] and lters are used
that perform a correlation with the type of GPR incident pulse [5].
However, the presence of multiple reections worsens the
performance of these kinds of methods since it is difcult to
associate the reected pulse with its respective interface where
the reection originates. Another disadvantage is that very thin
layers generate overlapped pulses making the task of obtaining the
reected pulses individually very complex.
The determination of electrical properties is usually simplied
by expressions that relate the permittivity with the amplitude of
the reected pulses [4]. In [3], the authors propose an iterative
scheme for detecting the amplitude of the reected pulses using
the least squares method. The accuracy of this method is highly
dependent on the evaluation of the reection instants.
Other approaches are used to solve the inverse problem
considering stratied media. In [6], signal processing techniques
are applied, such as principal component analysis and neural
networks. Moreover, in [79] the authors construct a quadratic
error function between the electric eld phasors obtained from
the GPR measurement and phasors calculated using the mathematical model of the problem considering the thickness and the
permittivity of each medium as variables. However, these methods
do not report the characteristics of the error function and they
apply, without a clear criteria, deterministic optimization methods
based on gradient or stochastic methods considering that the
function is multimodal [10].
This work presents an unprecedented discussion of how the
variables impact the behavior of the error function, and describes
a strategy for solving the inverse problem. Establishing a limit for
2. Problem denition
Fig. 1 shows a typical pavement modeled as a set of dielectric
layers. Each layer is characterized by its thickness and its electric
permittivity, which may be determined by the GPR evaluation.
For dry paved roads, the structure materials have low conductivity [11]. Hence, the electromagnetic wave propagates easily
through the structure, which leads to a better context for property
estimation. This work is interested in this context, so that conductive
and polarization losses are not taken into account.
23
i i 1
;
i i 1
i M; M 1; ; 1
p
where i 0 =i and 0 is the air magnetic permeability.
The eld at the interface i is related to that of interface i1
through the matrix below:
" #
"
#"
#
jk d
Ei
i e jki di Ei 1
1 e i i
; i M; M 1; ; 1
3
Ei 1
Ei
i i ejki di e jki di
where at each interface the coefcient i obeys the following
p
relationship: i i 1. The variable ki i is the propagation
constant and 2 f is the angular frequency.
Simultaneously solving (1), (2) and (3) results in the following
recursive relationship:
i Ri 1 e 2jki di
1 i Ri 1 e 2jki di
3. Mathematical model
Ri
where i M; M 1; ; 2; 1 and RM 1 M 1 .
The analysis of the pavement problem via GPR does not use the
information about the eld distribution throughout the structure.
The only eld used in the analysis is the phasor reected on the
surface of the pavement which is the phasor R1 .
For obtaining this phasor we should rst determine RM 1 then
RM , and so on recursively until reaching the rst interface. Therefore, the phasor R1 is a complex and nonlinear function dependent
on thickness variables, d1 ; d2 ; ; dM , the permittivity variables,
1 ; 2 ; ; M 1 , and the frequency. This feature of the R1 function
introduces much difculty for solving the inverse problem of the
pavement evaluation. To not overburden the nomenclatures in
paper the phasor R1 be only called R after that section.
Ri
Ei
Ei
Tx Rx
Air
4. Inverse problem
4.1. Denitions
d1
d2
d3
d4
24
Thickness (m)
Relative permittivity
1st
2nd
3rd
4th
5th
0.04
0.15
0.075
0.15
1
4.0
5.0
4.0
9.0
11.0
2;f j pp
f j 0 0 2
0.7
erf (fj=1.0GHz)
|R(d )|
2
0.6
|R |
1/2
erf(d )
2,f
0.5
erf2 (fk=1.5GHz)
0.2
0.15
2,f
erf
0.4
1/2
1/2 2,f
0.1
0.3
0.2
0.05
0.1
0
0
0.05
0
0.1
0.15
0.2
0.3
0.4
thickness, d2 [m]
Fig. 3. Analysis the of error function with respect to layer thickness.
0.1
0.15
0.2
0.25
thickness, d2 [m]
Fig. 4. Behavior of the quadratic error function considering two frequencies
emitted by the GPR.
wavelength in each medium is equal or greater than di , considering the maximum frequency that GPR emits. This means that
the previous analysis done for layer 2 must be done for each layer.
Under this condition and considering that the range of the
thickness variables is a prior determined, the maximum frequency
irradiated by the GPR must be
1
2
di r i;f max
25
1 1
1 1
f max r p p
2 0 0 i di
10
5. Results
The automatic method of parameters estimation in the pavement problem is tested in two cases in this section. The values of
R0 are computed through the analytic expression of a mathematical model in order to simulate the real word measurement.
5.1. Flexible pavement
The pavement analyzed here is described in [3] and Table 1
shows its properties on each layer.
Table 2 shows the range of thickness and permittivity variables,
which determines the feasible domain where the problem of minimizing (7) is solved. The maximum frequency is readily computed for
each layer, using the expression (3), ensuring that the erf function has
only one global minimum. The lowest frequency in this table is used
as the highest frequency emitted by the GPR.
With these guidelines, it follows an analysis of the error function
considering one and two variables. For the thickness variables, the
erf function has one global minimum as shown in Fig. 6 and, for
permittivity variables, the erf is shown in Fig. 7. Fig. 8 shows the
level sets of erf considering 1 and d1 as variables. These gures
show that the error function has only a single global minimum.
Table 2
Variable limits and the computation of the maximum frequency of the GPR.
Layer
d (m)
fmax (GHz)
1st
2nd
3rd
4th
5th
0.030.05
0.11250.1875
0.0550.095
0.11250.1875
3.05.0
2.57.5
3.05.0
7.011.0
8.514.5
3.75
0.89
1.87
0.66
Table 3
Calculation of the maximum frequency.
Layer
d (m)
f max (GHz)
1st
2nd
0.0750.125
2.04.0
6.010.0
1.75
0.4
0.35
0.04
erf(d )
1
erf(d )
2
0.03
0.25
erf(d3)
erf(d )
0.2
erf
erf
0.3
0.15
0.02
0.1
0.01
0.05
0
10
12
14
16
18
relative permittivity,2
Fig. 5. Behavior of the error function with respect to relative permittivity for low
and high frequencies.
0.05
0.1
0.15
0.2
0.25
thickness [m]
Fig. 6. Function behavior considering each thickness variable separately.
26
x 103
0.8
erf(2)
erf(3)
0.6
erf( )
10
erf
erf
0.4
5
0.2
0
10
relative permittivity
relative permittivity
0.025
erf(4)
0.15
erf( )
5
0.1
erf
erf
0.02
0.015
0.01
0.05
0.005
4
9 10
12
14
10 11 12
14
16
relative permittivity
relative permittivity
relative permittivity 1
4.5
6. Conclusion
3.5
3
0.03
0.035
0.04
0.045
0.05
thickness d1 [m]
Fig. 8. Function behavior considering two variables: level sets of erf d1 ; 1 .
Table 4
Frequencies emitted by the GPR.
Case
Frequencies (GHz)
Flexible pavement
Simple pavement
0.60.550.50.450.40.350.3
1.75
The ellipsoid method [13] has been used to solve the minimization problem of erf. The algorithm nds the global optimum
within the machine epsilon error for thickness and permittivity.
The frequencies contained in the output signal of the GPR are
presented in Table 4. These frequencies respect to the maximum
frequency of 0.66 GHz which is given in Table 2.
Acknowledgments
This work was supported by National Council for Scientic and
Technological Development (CNPq) and Foundation for Research
Support in Minas Gerais (FAPEMIG), Brazil.
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[12]
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