Pulse versus Stepped Frequency Continuous Wave modulation for Ground

Penetrating Radar

A. Langman and M.R. Inggs

Radar Remote Sensing Group, Department of Electrical Engineering
University of Cape Town,Private Bag, Rondebosch 7701, South Africa
Email: mikings@eng.uct.ac.za Web: http://rrsg.ee.uct.ac.za
Tel: +27 21 650 2799 Fax: +27 21 650 3465

Abstract There has often been debate concerning the relative mer-
tis of pulsed (carrier-less) and Stepped Frequency Continuous Wave
(SFCW) radars used in Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) applications.
It is sometimes claimed that SFCW has poor time sidelobe performance.
In this paper we tease out the definiton of resolution and bandwidth, and
show that both systems have equivalent resolution and time sidelobe per-
formance if the spectral shapes are properly defined.
I. I NTRODUCTION
The object of any Ground Penetrating Radar system (GPR)
is to provide information that relates to the location and phys-
only means of inversion and information extraction [3].
II. R ESOLUTION AND SPECTRAL SHAPE
An important concept that appears frequently in radar the-
ory is the concept of resolution. Wehner [4] defines the range
resolution in terms of the ability to resolve point targets sepa-
rated in slant range (along the line of sight) of the radar. If we
assume that the received waveform has a bandwidth,  (see
Figure 1a), the corresponding impulse response for the wave-
 
form would have a 


ical properties of targets that are to be detected. Hence, when
choosing a GPR modulation technique, it is essential to choose
one that yields the most information for the specific applica-
tion. In some cases one might qualify the latter statement with
requirements for speed of operation, or regulatory control of
radiated spectrum [2].
It is also important to choose the correct means for compar-
ing the performance of the waveforms against carefully spec-
ified operational requirements. In this paper, we will give an
example where we will compare impulse to stepped frequency
continuous wave GPR. The comparison criteria will be based
on both spectral shape and time domain waveform and how
these relate to radar resolution and range sidelobes.
The paper begins by providing a basic discription of impulse
and SFCW GPR. It then continues by defining the concept of
resolution and the impulse response of the radar. Finally the
waveforms are compared on the basis of equivalent resolution
(bandwidth) and sidelobes, and they are seen to be the same.
Most commerical GPR systems use an impulse waveform,
where the radar transmits a very narrow pulse (less than a few
nano-seconds), with a large peak power, at a constant pulse
repetition frequency (PRF). This signal is then applied to the
terminals of a broad-band antenna. The time delayed received
waveform is then sampled, usually integrated and then dis-
played. We must also bear in mind [2] that the resulting spec-
trum consists of lines, spaced at the radar repetition rate.
The stepped frequency continuous wave waveform is im-
separated in frequency by


plemented by transmitting a number of single frequency tones
hertz. At each frequency
the amplitude and phase of the received data is sampled and
recorded. Most implementations then use the Inverse Discrete
Fourier Transform (IDFT) to transform the data into the spatial
domain. This yields a synthesised pulse. Clearly this is not the
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form. The resulted time resolution
   is given by the width of the mainlobe at the point
below the peak (a convenient criterion chosen to simplify
the formula). Hence using this minimum distance we would
be able to resolve the impulse response from two targets - as is
shown in Figure 1(b)
It is important to note that in most GPR scenarios we are in-
terested in the impulse response of the target, since time side-
lobes can swamp, weak, close-by targets. The corresponding
targets bandwidth (target reflectivity spectrum) may not nec-
essarily be rectangular i.e. with corresponding time domain
response.
We use the term "resolution" to provide some upper limit
to the resolving power of the waveform - but this is only an
approximation, with the strong assumption that our target is a
point scatterer (with corresponding "infinite" reflectivity spec-
trum [5],[3]). When comparing resolutions of difference wave-
forms, one must be careful of how one defines the bandwith
of the system. The concept of resolution can also be applied
to cross-range resolution, depth resolution and even frequency
resolution. In this paper we will limit our discussion to depth
profiles.
Recent papers have looked at the comparison between vari-
ous waveforms, in particular impulse and SFCW types [1]. An
important criterion used in these papers is the level of side-
lobes. In the previous section we saw that the radar bandwith
related not only to the radar resolution but also to the side-lobe
level, when the spectral shape is considered.
For a SFCW waveform, the shape of the radiated spectrum
is typically limitted (truncated) by the frequency range of the
frequency generator - hence the spectral shape is considered
to be rectangular. It is also not continuous, due to the discrete
step nature of the modulation.
If we now consider the case of an impulse waveform. The
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 (a) Frequency/Time transform for a pulse waveform
(b) Resolution of two pulses
Figure 1. Relationship between bandwidth, impulse response
and resolution.
bandwidth of the resulting transmitted pulse is typically trun-
cated and shaped by the antenna response. The waveform
bandwith is then defined (typically) as the width of the wave-
form spectrum at 3dBs below the peak response in the band-
width of the antenna. If we wish to compare the resolution and
sidelobe level for an impulse and SFCW waveform (using the
above definitions for pulse bandwith), one would be comparing
waveforms with spectra as shown in Figure 2. Here we show
a Gaussian shaped impulse (which has Gaussian shaped spec-
trum) with a SFCW operating over the same 3dB bandwidth.
The resulting impulse response for the two waveforms is
shown in Figure 3, and the SFCW impulse response is indeed
dismal.
The sidelobes of the impulse response of the SFCW can be
reduced by weighting the spectrum. In fact, if we weight the
SFCW spectra with a window that has the same envelop as the
envelope of the spectrum of the impulse waveform and we en-
sure that both spectra cover the same carrier frequency span,
then both waveforms will have the same impulse response.
There is thus no difference between the waveforms, based on
the restricted criteria of resolution and side lobes. The results
will be the same as shown in Figure 3, except the synthetic
range response is now generated by applying a Guassian win-
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Figure 2. Spectra of a Gaussian pulse and conventional SFCW
waveform.
Figure 3. Impulse response of a Gaussian pulse and SFCW
waveform.
dow to the frequency domain data ensuring that the band-
width points are the same as that of an equivalent impulse radar
waveform.
III. C ONCLUSIONS
When comparing the impulse response of two waveforms, it
is important to take care in how one defines the spectra. The
bandwidth alone is not sufficient. The GPR literature is littered
with papers comparing the impulse response of the baseband
pulse and SFCW modulation techniques, however most miss
the simple point that theoretically the waveforms can be made
identical. The difference lie more in the implementation of the
hardware and the algorithms to extract the information from
the radar waveforms.
With the growing interest by regulatory authorities [2] in the
EMC of GPR, the impulse, repetive nature of pulsed systems
may not be as attractive as the equivalent SFCW system, which
has possibilities of sophisticated spectral control.
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 R EFERENCES

[1] Noon, D.A. & Stickley, G.F., The Relationships between Ring-down,
Range-sidelobes and Quality Factor of GPR Antennas, 7th International
Conference on Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR98), Lawrence, Kansas,
pp. 63-68, May 27-30, 1998.
[2] Gary Oeloft, http://www.g-p-r.com/regulato.htm
[3] R.T. Lord, Aspects of Stepped-Frequency Processing for Low-Frequency
SAR Systems, PhD Thesis, University of Cape Town, Rondebosch, South
Africa, 2000.
[4] D.R. Wehner, High-Resolution Radar Artech House, Dedham, Ma, USA,
1995.
[5] A.J. Wilkinson, R.T. Lord and M.R. Inggs, Stepped-Frequency Process-
ing by Reconstruction of Target Reflectivity Spectrum, IEEE Proc. of the
South African Symp. on Communications and Signal Processing, COM-
SIG98, Cape Town, South Africa, pp. 101104, September 1998.

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