A dielectric horn antenna and lightweight radar system for material inspection

Jezova, Jana [UCL] Lambot, Sébastien [UCL]

In this paper,we set up a lightweight, frequency-domain radar systemusing a handheld vector network analyser combined with air-coupled and dielectric-coupled horn antennas. A new positioning system with a binary barcode ruler, reading webcam and an algorithm for its recognition was developed. The radar systemwas tested on severalmedia using both the air-coupled and dielectric-coupled antennas, namely, on a laboratorymodel containing sand and on a concrete block with a metallic reinforcement. The resulting GPR images demonstrated the good functioning of the radar system. In our experiments, both antennas and thewhole lightweight radar system provided radar imageswhich permitted to clearly detect the buried objects. Furthermore, the dielectric-coupled horn antenna showed better coupling with the investigated materials, resulting in higher-quality radar images.