This award supports research that is concerned with significantly improving the recognition and definition of buried objects with multi-component ground penetrating radar (GPR) measurements in three dimensional space by utilizing the vector properties of electromagnetic energy, which is generally referred to as polarization. The experiments conducted with this support are designed to address the following problems related to GPR polarization: 1) determine the nature of the polarized GPR electric field from anennas that are designed as linear electric dipoles, 2)develop the basic methodology for determining antenna patterns from experimental measurements on simple geometric objects (sphere, plane and cylinder), 3) develop the means to measure, process, display and interpret multi-component polarization measurements, and 4) establish a library of scattering matrices for some common targets. The testing will be conducted using physical models located at the Ohio State University, and a finite difference time domain computer modeling software. Results of these studies will be used to improve the resolution and definition of three dimensional displays of GPR data. ***
