Removing Rebar Clutter Through Iterative F-k Migration in GPR Data

In the ground-penetrating radar (GPR) detection of concrete structures, the reflection of rebar layers often obscures the useful signals below. In this letter, an effective and practical method for removing rebar clutter is proposed. It is based on iterative F-k migration and demigration, combined with real-time mask window and some classic GPR data processing steps. First, we calculate the wave velocity through travel time and layer thickness and migrate the B-scan data. Then, we create a mask window to extract the focused rebar reflection. Finally, the rebar clutter is restored through F-k demigration and removed from the original data. Meanwhile, multiple iterations are performed to ensure the complete removal of rebar clutter. The proposed method is not limited by data size and observation scale. The effectiveness of the proposed method is demonstrated by both numerical simulations and model field experiments.