Lightweight ground penetrating radar (GPR) systems mounted on multirotor drones is a trend that has risen in popularity over the past few years. Efforts of some manufacturers and systems integrators who promote airborne GPR systems for a variety of applications have been the drivers behind these trends, but prospective customers often overlook the significant legal restrictions around airborne GPR use in Europe, the US and Canada, as well as the limitations imposed by physics when lifting a radar system into the air. This paper will examine the current legal framework of airborne GPR instruments, as well as the limitations imposed by physics. Notwithstanding these limitations, there are viable applications for drone based GPR surveying, and examples of successful and unsuccessful surveys are provided. Also discussed will be possible future instrumentation designs which could mitigate some of the physics limitations.
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Francke et al. (2021) studied this question.
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