Three-Dimensional Imaging of High-Contrast Subsurface Anomalies: Composite Model-Constrained Dual-Parameter Full-Waveform Inversion for GPR

Civil engineering structures with damage, defects, or subsurface utilities create a high-contrast exploration environment. These anomalies of interest exhibit different electromagnetic properties from the surrounding medium, and ground-penetrating radar (GPR) has the potential to accurately locate and map their three-dimensional (3D) distributions. However, full-waveform inversion (FWI) for GPR data struggles to simultaneously reconstruct high-resolution 3D images of both permittivity and conductivity models. Considering the magnitude and sensitivity disparities of the model parameters in the inversion of GPR data, this study proposes a 3D dual-parameter FWI algorithm for GPR with a composite model constraint strategy. It balances the gradient updates of permittivity and conductivity models through performing total variation (TV) regularization and minimum support gradient (MSG) regularization on different parameters in the inversion process. Numerical experiments show that TV regularization can optimize permittivity reconstruction, while MSG regularization is more suitable for conductivity inversion. The TV+MSG composite model constraint strategy improves the accuracy and stability of dual-parameter inversion, providing a robust solution for the 3D imaging of subsurface anomalies with high-contrast features. These outcomes offer researchers theoretical insights and a valuable reference when investigating scenarios with high-contrast environments.