Road surface layers geometric parameters estimation by ground penetrating radar using Estimation of Signal Parameters via Rotational Invariance Techniques method

Abstract

International audienceIn civil engineering, ground penetrating radar is widely used to assess the roadway structures. This study evaluates the influence of interface roughness. A modified estimation of signal parameters by rotational invariance techniques algorithm is proposed with a spectral smoothing technique for efficiently estimating the time delay, the permittivity of the layers and the interface roughness. To reduce the impact of noise, a preprocessing method called propagator is used to estimate the noise variance. The algorithm is tested on simulated data obtained by the rigorous numerical method called PILE (propagation inside layer expansion). Numerical simulations are conducted to assess the performance of the algorithm. The simulation results show that the proposed algorithm can estimate road parameters with small relative root mean square erro

Estimation of time delay and interface roughness by GPR using modified MUSIC

“…For doing so, a curve fitting is made by using least squares method to estimate the parameters of the model. In [19,20], the exponential shape | ( )| = × ( −¯) s f s bf exp k with roughness parameterb of the scattered echo amplitude is studied. In this paper, we introduce a Gaussian shape | ( )| = × ( − ) s f s bf exp k 2 with a different roughness parameter b; where s k is the amplitude of the considered backscattered echo in the flat pavement.…”

“…In this paper, we propose to firstly estimate the time delays and then the interface roughness with an ultra-wideband GPR. In the following, the media are assumed to be lossless [20,21]. Roughness parameter is important for road safety, like pavement skid resistance analysis, and for analysing the inside of the pavement, especially to detect the cracks or debondings by highlighting the disaggregation of interface materials.…”

“…In [19,20], this kind of work has already been carried out, but the frequency behaviour coming from the roughness has been simply approximated by an exponential function (using a curve fitting method). In this situation, the high resolution methods can easily be applied for parameters estimation (time delays and roughness).…”

“…In order to reduce the errors coming from the curve fitting, we propose a modified MUSIC algorithm which can take into account several possible frequency behaviours, more adaptable for ultra-wideband GPR. Like in [19,20], we also focus on the estimation of time delays and interface roughness. Unlike the methods in [19,20], the proposed method allows estimating the time delays without knowing the frequency behaviour from roughness.…”

“…Like in [19,20], we also focus on the estimation of time delays and interface roughness. Unlike the methods in [19,20], the proposed method allows estimating the time delays without knowing the frequency behaviour from roughness. Then, the roughness parameter is estimated by MLE [22] with the estimated time delays from the modified MUSIC algorithm.…”