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@INPROCEEDINGS{Mester:1042308,
      author       = {Mester, Achim and Bachner, Mathias and Schardt, Georg and
                      Chkhetia, Rati and Silex, Wolfgang and Krenz, Eric and
                      Rongen, Heinz and Zimmermann, Egon and Klotzsche, Anja and
                      Natour, Ghaleb},
      title        = {{D}esign of a {N}ovel {S}calable {M}ulti-{C}hannel {GPR}
                      {S}ystem for {H}igh-{R}esolution {H}igh-{S}peed {T}omography
                      of {S}oil {C}olumns},
      reportid     = {FZJ-2025-02517},
      year         = {2025},
      abstract     = {Ground penetrating radar (GPR) offers the great potential
                      to non-invasively monitor soil and root conditions in
                      agricultural environments. A novel experiment in Jülich
                      aims at analysing the interactions between soil, plants and
                      atmosphere under controlled laboratory conditions with as
                      realistic as possible soil and atmosphere composition and
                      temperature. In order to monitor the distribution of water
                      and nutrition as well as the growth of roots and the flow
                      processes in the soil, a 3D GPR tomography system with a
                      spatial resolution of up to 5 cm and a temporal resolution
                      of about 10 s was designed. The novel system consists of 39
                      multi-antenna tiles (MAT), each holding 64 antennas that can
                      be used as transmitters and receivers. A MAT can be
                      connected to the main module (MAM) in a star-shaped topology
                      or to another MAT in a chain. In both configurations, the
                      tiles are synchronized with an accuracy of about 25 ps. By
                      this approach, the system is very versatile in terms of
                      adjusting the amount and distribution of modules. Each tile
                      contains its own data acquisition (DAQ) module, which is
                      based on a RF-system-on-module (RFSoM). Each RFSoM includes
                      DACs, ADCs, FPGA and CPU, such that the system internal
                      analog path in between of the data generation, the antennas
                      and the digitization is no longer than one meter. The
                      antennas need to have a wide bandwidth for the use of Ricker
                      pulses with a center frequency of 900 MHz and need to be
                      optimized for our specific setup that includes a large
                      amount of very close antennas. Therefore, we designed
                      two-dimensional antennas with a shape we refer to as
                      “circular bow-tie” and a size of 3 cm × 6 cm. Here, we
                      present the system requirements and our derived system
                      concept. The system is scalable in terms of
                      reducing/extending the amount of antenna channels and DAQ
                      modules. Due to the versatile DAQ hardware, the system also
                      offers great flexibility in terms of adjusting the generated
                      transmitter waveform and the signal processing.},
      month         = {Apr},
      date          = {2025-04-27},
      organization  = {EGU General Assembly 2025, Vienna
                       (Austria), 27 Apr 2025 - 2 May 2025},
      subtyp        = {After Call},
      cin          = {ITE / IBG-3},
      cid          = {I:(DE-Juel1)ITE-20250108 / I:(DE-Juel1)IBG-3-20101118},
      pnm          = {2173 - Agro-biogeosystems: controls, feedbacks and impact
                      (POF4-217)},
      pid          = {G:(DE-HGF)POF4-2173},
      typ          = {PUB:(DE-HGF)6},
      doi          = {10.5194/egusphere-egu25-13206},
      url          = {https://juser.fz-juelich.de/record/1042308},
}