Signal Stability and the Height-Correction Method for Ground-Penetrating Radar In Situ Asphalt Concrete Density Prediction

Ground-penetrating radar (GPR) has shown great potential for asphalt concrete density prediction used in quality control and quality assurance. One challenge of continuous GPR measurements is that the measured dielectric constant could be affected by signal stability and antenna height. This would jeopardize the accuracy of the asphalt concrete density prediction along the pavement. In this study, signal instability and shifting antenna height during continuous real-time GPR measurements were identified as main sources of error. After using a bandpass filter to preprocess the signal, a least-square adaptive filter, using gradient descent and least mean square methods, was developed to reconstruct the received signal to improve its stability. In addition, simulations were performed to evaluate the impact of geometric spreading caused by shifting antenna height during testing. A height correction was developed using a power model to correct the height-change impact. The proposed filter and height-correction method were assessed using static and dynamic tests. The least-square adaptive filter improved signal stability by 50% and the height-correction method removed the effect of shifting antenna height almost entirely.