SURVEYING METHODOLOGY

USING GPR ON UTILITIES

DETECTION

Syahrul Fithry
Senin
UiTM Pulau Pinang

CONTENT
Introduction
Parameters need to setup before surveying
by GPR
Survey grid setup
Basic Data Processing
Advanced Data Processing
Laboratory Session

INTRODUCTION
Utility surveying, according to the Survey Association [1], refers to the location,
positioning and identification of buried pipes, cables and ducts irrespective of
their sizes, depths, material types and proximity to other utilities using numerous
techniques or technologies,
Ground penetrating radar is one of the non-destructive methods useful in
locating underground facilities
Proper design of GPR surveys is critical
Setting expectations and optimizing data acquisition to meet expectations
requires planning.

PARAMETERS NEED TO
SETUP BEFORE SURVEYING
BY GPR

REFLECTION SURVEY
DESIGN
Before the survey, we need
to define 7 parameters;

a) Operating frequency,
fc
b) The time
window/Range
c) Sampling interval, Ts
d) Spacing of station
e) The antenna spacing
f) Line location spacing
g) Antenna orientation

OPERATING FREQUENCY, FC
Spatial

resolution required by the operator,

Clutter

limitation , L = clutter dimension (m)

Depth of exploration , D in meter

THE TIME WINDOW/RANGE

To estimate the time window

Depth = the maximum depth, Velocity = minimum velocity

If no information on the electrical properties of the

medium, we may consult the following table

SAMPLING INTERVAL, t
Sampling interval = the time interval between
points on a recorded waveform
should be at most half the period of the highest
frequency signal in the record
The pulse radiated contains energy from 0.5
times the centre frequency to 1.5 times the
centre frequency.

STATION SPACING,
In order not have aliasing ground response
(adequate defined steeping feature),

THE EFFECT OF REDUCING

THE STATION INTERVAL
Radargram of GPR with
station interval of 3 m (500
MHz)

Radargram of GPR with

station interval of 0.5 m
(500 MHz)

ANTENNAE SEPARATION*, S
The ability to vary the antenna spacing can be a powerful
aid in optimizing the system for specific types of target
detection

*-bistatic antennae

THE PATH LENGTH, L, OF THE

BISTATIC ANTENNAE
The effect of path length increase created by
separating antennas. The path length is

One should not make S so large that L becomes a great

deal larger than 2 x Depth in high loss conditions!!
If little is known about the survey area, a safe rule-ofthumb is set S equal to 20% of the target depth

SURVEY GRID SETUP

INTRODUCTION
1.0 DETERMINE THE SURVEY LINE SPACING
Establish grid system on the area is important before the work
starts
Generally, survey lines are established PERPENDICULAR to the
trend of features (to reduce the number of lines)
Survey lines location and orientation => to maximize
target detection

EXAMPLE OF PROPOSED
SURVEY LINES
If K = 8 (average soil), fc = 400 MHz, Depth = 3 m

OR use this formulae

=0.265 m

VIDEO ON SURVEY LINE

SETUP

2.0 SELECTION OF ANTENNAE

ORIENTATION
The antennas are normally oriented so that the
electric field is polarized parallel to the long axis
or strike direction of the target
Advisable to collect two data sets with orthogonal
antenna orientations in order to extract target
information based on coupling angle

3.0 DATA PROCESSING

BASIC DATA PROCESSING

Time-zero correction/Depth Correction (Actual surface of medium correction)
essential factor for conducting accurate depth measurements in
GPR
When an antenna is placed on or near the ground surface, the
direct wave is altered in shape and shifts later in time by up to
several tenths of a nanosecond, due to the dielectric loading of the
ground material in the near field of the antenna
Therefore need to associate zero-time with zero-depth, so any time
offset due to instrument recording must be removed before
interpretation of the radar image

Direct wave

Recorded GPR waveform through air and

Direct
wave
reflected by
metal

Recorded GPR waveform through concrete medium and

reflected by I-beam

POSSIBLE TIME-ZERO
POSITION

Filtering the data horizontally and vertically from noises

For horizontal direction, use Background Removal to reduce
the ringing noise (banding)
Background noise is a repetitive signal created by slight
ringing in the antennae, which produces a coherent banding
effect, parallel to the surface wave, across the section.
For vertical direction, Low pass frequency = 2 * fc
High pass frequency = 0.25 fc
FIR (Finite Impulse Response)
IIR (Infinite Impulse Response)

ADVANCED DATA PROCESSING

Distance normalization
This correction need to remove the effects of non-constant motion along the
profile. Data are collected continuously, and will not be represented correctly in the
image if steps are not taken to correct for the variable horizontal data coverage.

Horizontal scaling
- Stacking - to remove scattered radiation due to very small target (rock etc)
- Skipping to skip certain N scan data if the site is found to be homogenous
Strecthing- to add certain N scan data by interpolation process

Block editing
-To crop certain data by blocking the data

Time varying gain

to increase certain signal due to signal attenuation

Gain is used to compensate for amplitude variations in the GPR image; early
signal arrival times have greater amplitude than later times because these
early signals have not travelled as far. The loss of signal amplitude is related to
geometric spreading as well as intrinsic attenuation. Various time-variable gain
functions may be applied in an effort to equalize amplitudes of the recorded
signals. The most commonly applied is an automatic gain control (AGC) that is a
time varying gain that runs a window of chosen length along each trace, point
by point, finding the average amplitude over the length of the window about
each point. A gain function is then applied such that the average at each point
is made constant along the trace.
-

Gain restoration

to start fresh the data to its raw data after time varying gain process

Hilbert Transformation
- will decompose the signal into frequency, magnitude and phase

 Deconvolution
- will separate two overlapping signals and distinguish it
Migration

- a process where the wave velocity and dielectric constant of the

medium can be computed; locate the depth of the object

LABORATORY SESSION :
RADAN