Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) systems mounted on Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are becoming a promising solution to inspect beneath the soil surface. In particular, resorting to Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) techniques, these systems are able to retrieve subsurface radar images, in which buried targets can be detected. However, one of the major bottlenecks of this technology is the significant amount of time required for computing the radar images (due to the usage of computationally expensive algorithms to handle non-regular acquisition domains). To face this challenge, this work proposes an efficient interpolation approach, combining a height shift operation with a 2D interpolation, that enables the adoption of a migration algorithm called Phase Shift Migration (PSM). As a result, the processing time is drastically improved, offering close to real-time operation. The proposed methodology has been validated in a realistic scenario for detecting buried explosive targets, comparing it with conventional backprojection techniques in terms of image quality and processing time.

中文翻译：

---

实现无人机 GPR-SAR 成像系统的实时处理


安装在无人机 (UAV) 上的探地雷达 (GPR) 系统正在成为检查土壤表面以下的有前途的解决方案。特别是，借助合成孔径雷达（SAR）技术，这些系统能够检索地下雷达图像，其中可以检测埋藏的目标。然而，该技术的主要瓶颈之一是计算雷达图像所需的大量时间（由于使用计算成本昂贵的算法来处理非规则采集域）。为了应对这一挑战，这项工作提出了一种有效的插值方法，将高度移位操作与 2D 插值相结合，从而能够采用称为相移迁移 (PSM) 的迁移算法。因此，处理时间大大缩短，提供接近实时的操作。所提出的方法已在用于检测埋藏爆炸物目标的现实场景中得到验证，并将其与传统的反投影技术在图像质量和处理时间方面进行了比较。