High resolution subsurface imaging with a holographic radar mounted on a robotic scanner.

Ground penetrating radar operating at high frequency (>1GHz) are currently used for subsurface (<20 cm) investigations. Contrast imaging due to electromagnetic properties of the buried objects is obtained by gathering and processing the reflected signals from buried objects. Commonly the data are collected by manual scans: this is a time consuming process and it is also affected by errors in the spatial positioning of the data. In this work, we present a novel approach by devising a compact and light robotic scanner that is remotely controlled.The robot object scanner operates with high planar resolution and multi-frequency holographic radar of RASCAN type using a monostatic antenna. The paper describes the advantages of this new instrument for archaeological surveys with high resolution real-time images of shallow objects and virtually “zero” set up time for carrying out the full scan.