Reconstruction Capabilities of Down-Looking Airborne GPRs: The Single Frequency Case

This paper addresses the problem of imaging shallow buried targets via ground penetrating radar surveys carried out by an airborne platform. The radar system is monostatic and collects scattered field data at a single frequency in down-looking mode and along parallel lines. The data are processed by means of an image formation algorithm based on a microwave tomographic approach valid under Born and start-stop approximations. The goal of the present study is to derive analytical results for the spatial resolution depending on the measurement configuration parameters. The achieved results highlight the peculiar features of the imaging configuration providing useful indications for setting a proper acquisition strategy. Numerical results based on synthetic data are shown to support the analysis of resolution limits.