DTIF’2002

“Third DTIF Workshop on: Ground Penetrating Radar in support of humanitarian demining”
September 23-24, 2002

Improved deconvolution and time-frequency feature

extraction for GPR landmine detection

T. Savelyev, L. van Kempen and H. Sahli

VUB – Department ETRO, Electronics and Information Processing

Email: {tsavelyev, lmkempen, hsahli}@etro.vub.ac.be

 Overview

I. Improved deconvolution
• Deconvolution and regularization
• Accuracy and stability of deconvolution
• Estimation of “DEMINE” GPR system impulse response and noise deviation
• Performance of regularized deconvolution, -method
• Deconvolved “DEMINE” signals for metallic and non-metallic objects
II. Time-frequency feature extraction
• Wigner distribution (WD) as a tool for the time-frequency signal analysis
• Extraction of the informative part of the WD-matrix
• Extraction of discriminant and robust features from singular triplets of the WD
• Features of buried objects (PMN-2, PMA-1, bullet shell, stone) for the
“DEMINE” data
 Deconvolution and regularization

The received GPR signal is a convolution of a target signal and a system impulse response
h(1) 0 0 ... 0 x (1) For periodic sensing signals we can use
h ( 2) h(1) 0 ... 0 x ( 2) the concept of circular convolution.
y  h(3) h ( 2) h(1) ... 0  x (3)  Hx y – received signal
... ... ... ... ... ...
x – target signal
h ( N ) h ( N  1) h( N  2) ... h(1) x( N )
Deconvolution in ultra-wideband signal analysis H – square convolution matrix
is an ill-posed inverse problem because “DEMINE” GPR impulse response
H – ill-conditioned matrix;
y – noisy signal with noise level .
Regularization methods are intended for
solution of such problems.
x    H T H  I  H T y  - Tikhonov regularization.
1

The main task is to define properly the

regularization parameter , , which must provide
lim x   x #
 0

x #  H# y - normal pseudosolution
 Accuracy and stability of deconvolution

Accuracy – measure of similarity between the received signal y and its reconstruction with the
deconvolved signal x
y  Hx
dr  100% - relative distance as a numerical estimate of accuracy
y  Hx
Stability – measure of ringing in the deconvolved signal.
Noise level – measure of noise energy in the received signal y.
2
y - relationship between noise level and signal to noise ratio (SNR)
2 
1  SNR
2 2 2
y y y adaptive estimation of noise level from the received
 min
2
   2
1  SNRmax 2
ymax  2 2
ymax signal and noise deviation  defined a priori
1
2
Finding the regularization parameter 

1. y   Hx   - the Morozov criterion;   1.1

y   Hx    y   Hx      2 - another implementation of the Morozov criterion;

2

 HH  I  y
3
 
2.  3 T 2   2 - non-linear equation.
 Performance of regularized deconvolution
Estimation of system impulse
Iterative -method of regularization response and noise deviation
x k  x k 1   k ( x k 1  x k 2 )   k H T ( y   Hx k 1 )
Parameter  defines the order of the approximation
error decrease (in our case =1)
x #  x k  O ( k 2 ) k  
( k  1)( 2k  3)( 2k  2  1)
k  ,
(k  2  1)( 2k  4  1)( 2k  2  3)
(2k  2  1)( k    1)
k  4 ,
. ( k  2  1)( 2k  4  1)

k ( xk )   2 - stopping rule

Comparative analysis of the deconvolution methods for 512-element A-scan

Method Accuracy Computational speed Computational burden
1. Tikhonov with the 159.23 seconds
1.84% 10506 MFLOPS
Morozov criterion 6 iterations
2. Tikhonov with the 1118 seconds
5.07% 98411 MFLOPS
non-linear equation 29 iterations
7.42 seconds
3. -method 1.60% 373 MFLOPS
10 iterations
 Data acquisition in free space

“DEMINE” GPR array: 1-4 GHz - antenna bandwidth at -3 dB; 170 ps – pulse duration at -3 dB

Acquisition of the Acquisition of the

signal from a metal signal from a plastic
plate mine PMN-2 Objects

PMN-2
and
PMA-1

Stone and PMN-2

Bullet shell
 Deconvolved “DEMINE” signals

Metal plate (flat spectrum) PMN-2 (high frequencies dominate)

Bullet shell (low frequencies dominate) Stone (complicated spectrum)

 Target detection and A-scan recognition

Measurement Deconvolution Clutter removal

Detection
Measurement – data acquisition, antenna
crosstalk subtraction and pre-filtering
Deconvolution – regularized Feature extraction Classification
deconvolution of system impulse
response out of the received signal
Clutter removal – subtraction of background reflection (B-scan processing)
Detection – choosing the strongest target signal from the B-scan
Feature extraction – finding the discriminant features from a time-frequency signal
distribution
Classification – defining a target’s class with the most similar features
 B-scans of buried mines

PMN-2 at depth 3 cm PMN-2 at depth 10 cm

PMA-1 at depth 3 cm PMA-1 at depth 10 cm

 B-scans of buried stone and bullet shell

Depth 3 cm Depth 10 cm

Data acquisition scheme

 Wigner distribution


~  ~*   j 2f
WD(t , f )   2
s ( t  ) s ( t 
2
)e d - time-frequency distribution of signal energy
Full WD
~
s (t )  s(t )  jsˆ(t ) - analytic signal (Hilbert transform)

Numerically, the Wigner distribution (WD) is a real sparse N by N/4

matrix, where N – length of vector s(t).
The informative part of the WD in frequency domain lies within
GPR antenna bandwidth 1-4 GHz and can be computed for that
bandwidth directly.
In time domain the informative part of the WD can be defined with
time deviation from the mass centre (the rule “ ”) Informative part of the WD

 
1
t mc    tWD(t, f )
2
2
dfdt - centre of mass in time
WD(t , f ) F   

 
1
    (t  t
2
t 2 mc ) 2 WD(t , f ) 2 dfdt - time variance
WD(t , f ) F  
 Wigner distribution for mines

PMN-2 at depth 3 cm PMN-2 at depth 10 cm

PMA-1 at depth 3 cm PMA-1 at depth 10 cm

 Wigner distribution for bullet shell and stone

Bullet shell at depth 3 cm Bullet shell at depth 10 cm

Stone at depth 3 cm Stone at depth 10 cm

 Time-frequency feature extraction

min( L , M )
WDLM  
k 1
k u k v Tk - singular value decomposition of the WD-matrix (informative part)

 k , uk , v k  - k-th singular triplet

k - k-th singular value, energetic characteristic of the k-th triplet
uk - k-th left singular vector Lx1, time representation
vk - k-th right singular vector Mx1, frequency representation

The proposed features

sv t
t mc 1 2
1.  t   
t 2  t1 t 2  t1 t1
tu1 (t ) 2 dt - centre of mass of the 1-st left singular vector normalized to
duration of the signal, or normalized mass central time

f2
f mcsv 1
2.  f    fv ( f ) df
2
2 - centre of mass of the 2-nd right singular vector normalized
f 2  f1 f 2  f1 f1 to antenna bandwidth, or normalized mass central
frequency
 12
3. e  2 - energy of the 1-st singular triplet normalized to energy of the WD, or
WD(t , f ) F normalized energy
 Signals and singular vectors
PMN-2 PMA-1

Bullet shell Stone

 Features of buried objects

Proposed features First 3 singular values as features

30 points per object: 15 points at depth 3 cm, 15 points at depth 10 cm

At each depth 5 points (5 different “DEMINE” channels) above object’s centre,
5 points at horizontal shift +2 cm from the centre,
5 points at horizontal shift -2 cm from the centre.
 Conclusions

• Regularization methods have been applied and tested for deconvolution problem in ultra-
wideband signal analysis. The iterative -method gave the best performance.
• Adaptive noise level estimation in a received signal has been proposed for regularized
deconvolution.
• Deconvolution of GPR system impulse response has been applied as a processing step in
target feature extraction.
• An algorithm of information extraction from the Wigner distribution has been developed. The
algorithm extracts a dense signal part from a sparse WD matrix.
• Normalized energy of the WD’s 1-st singular triplet, normalized mass central time of the 1-st
left singular vector and normalized mass central frequency of the 2-nd right singular vector
have been proposed as robust and discriminant target features.
• The features of buried plastic mines PMN-2 and PMA-1, of a bullet shell and a stone have
been extracted with the “DEMINE” GPR. The features showed a good clustering and a good
separation of objects independent on the depth of the objects.

Reference
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1997.
2. H.W. Engl, M. Hanke, A. Neubauer. Regularization of inverse problems. Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1996.
3. G.C. Gaunaurd, H.C. Strifors. Applications of time-frequency signature analysis to target-identification. Part
of SPIE conference on wavelet applications VI, Orlando, Florida, April 1999, Proc. SPIE vol. 3723, pp. 78-90.