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Buried Target Imaging: A Comparative Study

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Abstract

A wide variety of qualitative methods have been proposed for microwave imaging. It is difficult to select only one of these methods based on a priori information and measurement equipment to achieve a reliable reconstruction. Various arrangements for antennas to be used in, for instance, have been proposed which have direct impacts on the complexity of inverse methods as well as the quality of output images. In this study, four qualitative methods of the linear sampling method (LSM), time reversal (TR), diffraction tomography (DT), and back-projection (BP) have been reviewed in a 2D scenario; the performance of the methods is compared within the same framework of a multi-static configuration. The goal is to compare their resolutions and determine their advantages and drawbacks. It is shown that LSM provides the best azimuth resolution but the worst range resolution. It is almost invariant to dielectric contrast and is appropriate for a wide range of dielectric contrasts and relatively large objects. It is also shown that at relatively low dielectric contrasts, TR images are most similar to the true object, show fewer artifacts, and offer high immunity to noise. While suffering from more artifacts due to the presence of some ghost images, DT offers the best range resolution. The results also show that BP has the worst azimuth resolution when reconstructing deeply-buried targets, although its implementation is straightforward and not computationally complex.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Electrical Engineering Department, K. N. Toosi University of Technology, Tehran, Iran

    Morteza Ghaderi Aram & Ali Khaleghi

  2. Center of Excellence on Applied Electromagnetic Systems, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran

    Mojtaba Dehmollaian

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  1. Morteza Ghaderi Aram
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  2. Mojtaba Dehmollaian
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  3. Ali Khaleghi
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Correspondence to Morteza Ghaderi Aram.

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Ghaderi Aram, M., Dehmollaian, M. & Khaleghi, A. Buried Target Imaging: A Comparative Study. Sens Imaging 18, 19 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11220-017-0169-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11220-017-0169-4

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