Integration of a Ground Penetrating Radar with a Radiometer to Increase Information Content and Accuracy in Subsurface Sounding

Abstract

The relationship between the radio brightness temperature and the electrophysical characteristics of the soil is known, which implies the possibility of solving inverse problems, namely: determining the electrophysical characteristics of the soil and its state by the measured parameters of its radio-thermal radiation [1]. The comparison of L-band radiometer and off-ground ultra-wideband ground penetrating radar (GPR) to map surface soil moisture at the field scale over bare soil was firstly performed in [2], [3]. In this work, the integration of an active chirp GPR with a radiometer is proposed, i.e. combining various sensors into a single complex, which has higher characteristics in terms of accuracy, information content and reliability in comparison with individual instruments.