Abstract

Kirchhoff migration in ground penetrating radar (GPR) has been the technique of collapsing diffraction events on unmigrated records to points, thus moving reflection events to their proper locations and creating a true image of subsurface structures. Today, the scope of Kirchhoff migration has been broadened and is a tool for electromagnetic wave velocity estimation. To optimize this algorithm, we propose using the energy diagram as a criterion of looking for the correct propagation velocity. Using theoretical models, we demonstrated that the calculated velocities were the same as the root mean square ones up to the top of objects. The results verified on field data showed that improved sections could be obtained and the size as well as depth of anomalies were determined with high reliability.