Intelligent Automation, Inc. — Department of Transportation SBIR Phase I: 122FH5

Description

Intelligent Automation Inc (IAI) in collaboration with IDS North America proposes to develop the next generation Ground Penetration Radar (GPR) technology called GeoRad. We will leverage an existing state –of-the-art dual-frequency dual-polarized massive array GPR and improve its accuracy so that wires, and pipes can be mapped. The accuracy of the position of the ground penetration radar directly affects the accuracy of the 3D image of utilities and underground infrastructure. The proposed effort marries IDS’s start-of-the-art GPR hardware with IAI’s high-accuracy RF positioning, high-resolution Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imaging and innovative inverse scattering target recognition technologies. Low cost/High resolution point-to-point ranging capability of Ultra-wideband (UWB) radio makes it a good candidate for improving the positioning of the ground penetration radar. Furthermore, with accurate positioning at the level of fraction of wavelength, IAI’s Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imaging algorithm is capable of coherently process over a large travel distance and provide high-resolution SAR images, even for low-frequency signals, which can penetrate deep in to the surface, allowing imaging of rock/soil substructure. IAI’s model-based inverse scattering technique can further derive target shape and material based on SAR measurements, which greatly facilitate underground object recognition, and determine the extent of moisture/water intrusion .