69 BULGARIAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES CYBERNETICS AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES • Volume 8, No 4 Sofia • 2008 A Software Tool for GPR Data Simulation and Basic Processing Vera Behar 1 , Boriana Vassileva 1 , Christo Kabakchiev 2 1 Mathematical Methods for Sensor Information Processing, IPP, 1113 Sofia E-mails: behar@bas.bg bvassil@bas.bg 2 Department of Information Technologies, Sofia University “St Kliment Ohridski, 1164 Sofia E-mail: kabakchiev@fmi.uni-sofia.bg Abstract: In this paper, a software tool developed in Matlab for stepped-frequency GPR (Ground Penetration Radar) is presented. It is intended for data simulation, image formation and basic GPR signal and image processing. The designed software can be useful for the researchers to help them analyze the performances of the different algorithms for data acquisition, signal processing and image processing. A part of the results, achieved using this package, is presented in this work. Keywords: Ground penetrating radar, image processing, Monte Carlo simulation analysis. 1. Introduction Typically, GPR data are basically processed with commercial packages (such as Radan Geophysical Survey Systems Ins. or Haescan Roadscanners), which are aimed more at the commercial users than the researchers. The software source codes of these packages are often not open and they are not always available for the researchers. These facts make commercial packages less useful for research needs. Because of this, a mini-package for realizing the most important basic processing algorithms is developed. There are different algorithms for noise and spice events suppression, direct and air waves removing, attenuation losses correction. The input data can be real or simulated radargram. These data can be the output radargram of new currently investigated processing algorithm as well. The general algorithm for B-mode image (radargram) simulation and processing includes: calculation of the amplitude and two-way time delay of a