{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,4,6]],"date-time":"2026-04-06T11:51:31Z","timestamp":1775476291997,"version":"3.50.1"},"reference-count":41,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"6","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2024,3,7]],"date-time":"2024-03-07T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1709769600000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"name":"Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences","award":["XDA28050302"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["XDA28050302"]}]},{"name":"Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences","award":["6142414220710"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["6142414220710"]}]},{"name":"Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences","award":["61827803"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["61827803"]}]},{"name":"Science and Technology on Near-Surface Detection Laboratory","award":["XDA28050302"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["XDA28050302"]}]},{"name":"Science and Technology on Near-Surface Detection Laboratory","award":["6142414220710"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["6142414220710"]}]},{"name":"Science and Technology on Near-Surface Detection Laboratory","award":["61827803"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["61827803"]}]},{"name":"National Natural Science Foundation of China","award":["XDA28050302"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["XDA28050302"]}]},{"name":"National Natural Science Foundation of China","award":["6142414220710"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["6142414220710"]}]},{"name":"National Natural Science Foundation of China","award":["61827803"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["61827803"]}]},{"name":"Science and Technology Research and Development Program Project of China Railway Qinghai-Tibet Group Co., Ltd.","award":["XDA28050302"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["XDA28050302"]}]},{"name":"Science and Technology Research and Development Program Project of China Railway Qinghai-Tibet Group Co., Ltd.","award":["6142414220710"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["6142414220710"]}]},{"name":"Science and Technology Research and Development Program Project of China Railway Qinghai-Tibet Group Co., Ltd.","award":["61827803"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["61827803"]}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Remote Sensing"],"abstract":"<jats:p>Ground-penetrating radar (GPR) is a classic geophysical exploration method that utilizes the emission and reception of electromagnetic waves to non-destructively detect target objects in the target medium. It has been widely applied in various fields such as pipeline detection, cavity detection, and rebar detection. However, GPR systems are susceptible to environmental clutter interference, which poses challenges for data interpretation and subsequent processing. In this paper, the separability of clutter and target signal in the frequency-wavenumber (F-K) domain is validated through modeling, leading to the proposal of a comprehensive clutter removal method based on the F-K domain for complex scenarios. The direct coupling wave is initially eliminated by applying a peak matching mean subtraction filter, which avoids the artifacts. Subsequently, the F-K domain transformation is performed and surface clutter undulations are effectively removed using a method based on singular value decomposition and k-means clustering. Finally, an angle filter with Gaussian tapering at the edges is designed based on physical models to efficiently eliminate linear interference without undesired ringing interference. The commonly used clutter removal algorithms, including mean subtraction (MS), singular value decomposition (SVD), robust principal component analysis (RPCA), and traditional F-K filtering methods, are compared with the proposed algorithm on both the numerical simulated data and actual GPR data. The results from visual and quantitative analysis confirm that our proposed method is more effective than current commonly used clutter suppression algorithms. We have successfully enhanced the Signal-to-Clutter Ratio (SCR) of the GPR data, resulting in an Improvement Factor (IF) of 30.63 dB, 23.59 dB, and 30.60 dB for simulated data, experimental data, and TU1208 public data, respectively. The detection capability of buried targets is enhanced, thereby establishing a solid foundation for subsequent data interpretation and target identification.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/rs16060935","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2024,3,7]],"date-time":"2024-03-07T11:33:06Z","timestamp":1709811186000},"page":"935","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":11,"title":["A Clutter Removal Method Based on the F-K Domain for Ground-Penetrating Radar in Complex Scenarios"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"16","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0009-0001-9573-8352","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Qingyang","family":"Kong","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Aerospace Information Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China"},{"name":"Key Laboratory of Electromagnetic Radiation and Sensing Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China"},{"name":"School of Electronic, Electrical and Communication Engineering, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0009-0003-6030-8082","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Shengbo","family":"Ye","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Aerospace Information Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China"},{"name":"Key Laboratory of Electromagnetic Radiation and Sensing Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0009-0007-5776-7738","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Xiao","family":"Liang","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Aerospace Information Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China"},{"name":"Key Laboratory of Electromagnetic Radiation and Sensing Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China"},{"name":"School of Electronic, Electrical and Communication Engineering, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0009-0005-2839-6267","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Xu","family":"Li","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Aerospace Information Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China"},{"name":"Key Laboratory of Electromagnetic Radiation and Sensing Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China"},{"name":"School of Electronic, Electrical and Communication Engineering, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China"}]},{"given":"Xiaojun","family":"Liu","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Aerospace Information Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China"},{"name":"Key Laboratory of Electromagnetic Radiation and Sensing Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China"}]},{"given":"Guangyou","family":"Fang","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Aerospace Information Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China"},{"name":"Key Laboratory of Electromagnetic Radiation and Sensing Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China"},{"name":"School of Electronic, Electrical and Communication Engineering, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China"}]},{"given":"Guixing","family":"Si","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"China Railway Tenth Group Telecom Engineering Co., Ltd., Jinan 250101, China"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2024,3,7]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","unstructured":"Daniels, D.J. (2004, January 21\u201324). GPR for landmine detection, an invited review paper. Proceedings of the Tenth International Conference on Grounds Penetrating Radar, 2004. GPR 2004, Delft, The Netherlands."},{"key":"ref_2","unstructured":"Chen, W., Wang, W., Gao, J., Xu, J., and Wang, W. (2012, January 4\u20138). GPR clutter noise separation by statistical independency promotion. Proceedings of the 2012 14th International Conference on Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR), Shanghai, China."},{"key":"ref_3","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Lai, W.W., Chang, R.K., and Sham, J.F. (2017, January 28\u201330). Detection and imaging of city\u2019s underground void by GPR. Proceedings of the 2017 9th International Workshop on Advanced Ground Penetrating Radar (IWAGPR), Edinburgh, UK.","DOI":"10.1109\/IWAGPR.2017.7996055"},{"key":"ref_4","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"383","DOI":"10.1029\/RS011i004p00383","article-title":"Impulse radar sounding in permafrost","volume":"11","author":"Annan","year":"1976","journal-title":"Radio Sci."},{"key":"ref_5","unstructured":"Daniels, D. (1995, January 18\u201320). Searching for buried objects with surface penetrating radar. Proceedings of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. 29th Annual 1995 International Carnahan Conference on Security Technology, Sanderstead, UK."},{"key":"ref_6","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"15563","DOI":"10.1029\/91JE01114","article-title":"The subsurface character of Meteor Crater, Arizona, as determined by ground-probing radar","volume":"96","author":"Pilon","year":"1991","journal-title":"J. Geophys. Res. Planets"},{"key":"ref_7","unstructured":"Heincke, B., van der Kruk, J., Green, A., and Horstmeyer, H. (2004, January 21\u201324). Processing strategy for 3-D georadar data acquired in areas characterized by rugged topography. Proceedings of the Tenth International Conference on Grounds Penetrating Radar, 2004. GPR 2004, Delft, The Netherlands."},{"key":"ref_8","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"671","DOI":"10.1109\/LGRS.2016.2535161","article-title":"In-Wall Clutter Suppression Based on Low-Rank and Sparse Representation for Through-the-Wall Radar","volume":"13","author":"Zhang","year":"2016","journal-title":"IEEE Geosci. Remote Sens. Lett."},{"key":"ref_9","first-page":"437","article-title":"Interpretation of radio echo sounding in polar ice sheets","volume":"265","author":"Robin","year":"1969","journal-title":"Philos. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. Ser. A Math. Phys. Sci."},{"key":"ref_10","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Bogorodski\u012d, V.V., Bentley, C.R., and Gudmandsen, P.E. (1985). Radioglaciology, Springer Science & Business Media.","DOI":"10.1007\/978-94-009-5275-1"},{"key":"ref_11","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Baek, J., Yoon, J.S., Lee, C.M., and Choi, Y. (2018, January 18\u201321). A Case Study on Detection of Subsurface Cavities of Urban Roads Using Ground-coupled GPR. Proceedings of the 2018 17th International Conference on Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR), Rapperswil, Switzerland.","DOI":"10.1109\/ICGPR.2018.8441653"},{"key":"ref_12","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Solla, M., Lorenzo, H., Rial, F.I., Novo, A., and Riveiro, B. (2010, January 21\u201325). Masonry arch bridges evaluation by means of GPR. Proceedings of the XIII Internarional Conference on Ground Penetrating Radar, Lecce, Italy.","DOI":"10.1109\/ICGPR.2010.5550194"},{"key":"ref_13","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Liao, X.T., Hong, T.Q., Liu, D.J., Yang, M.W., Liao, X.T., and Cao, G.X. (2016, January 13\u201316). The analysis of frequency shift of the nonmetallic pipeline\u2019s GPR signal. Proceedings of the 2016 16th International Conference on Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR), Hong Kong, China.","DOI":"10.1109\/ICGPR.2016.7572704"},{"key":"ref_14","unstructured":"Grasmueck, M., Weger, R., and Horstmeyer, H. (2004, January 21\u201324). Full-resolution 3D GPR imaging for geoscience and archeology. Proceedings of the Tenth International Conference on Grounds Penetrating Radar, 2004. GPR 2004, Delft, The Netherlands."},{"key":"ref_15","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Gonzalez-Huici, M.A. (2012, January 4\u20138). A strategy for landmine detection and recognition using simulated GPR responses. Proceedings of the 2012 14th International Conference on Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR), Shanghai, China.","DOI":"10.1109\/ICGPR.2012.6254984"},{"key":"ref_16","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Hu, Y.S., Zeng, Z.F., Li, J., and Liu, F.S. (2016, January 13\u201316). Simulation and processing of LPR onboard the rover of Chang\u2019E-3 mission: Based on multilayer lunar regolith structure stochastic media model. Proceedings of the 2016 16th International Conference on Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR), Hong Kong, China.","DOI":"10.1109\/ICGPR.2016.7572611"},{"key":"ref_17","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"7","DOI":"10.1016\/0926-9851(95)90025-X","article-title":"Ground penetrating synthetic pulse radar: Dynamic range and modes of operation","volume":"33","author":"Hamran","year":"1995","journal-title":"J. Appl. Geophys."},{"key":"ref_18","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"418084","DOI":"10.1155\/2012\/418084","article-title":"Entropy-based clutter rejection for intrawall diagnostics","volume":"2012","author":"Solimene","year":"2012","journal-title":"Int. J. Geophys."},{"key":"ref_19","unstructured":"Gebremichael, T., Mali, D., and Zoubir, A.M. (2011, January 21\u201322). Clutter reduction techniques for GPR based buried landmine detection. Proceedings of the 2011 International Conference on Signal Processing, Communication, Computing and Networking Technologies, Thuckalay, India."},{"key":"ref_20","unstructured":"Li, T.-J., Kong, L.-J., and Zhou, Z.-O. (2008, January 21\u201324). Symmetry filtering method for GPR clutter reduction. Proceedings of the 2008 International Conference on Microwave and Millimeter Wave Technology, Nanjing, China."},{"key":"ref_21","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"875","DOI":"10.1109\/36.752207","article-title":"Detection of shallowly buried objects using impulse radar","volume":"37","author":"Brunzell","year":"1999","journal-title":"IEEE Trans. Geosci. Remote Sens."},{"key":"ref_22","unstructured":"Chan, T.C.T., So, H.C., and Ho, K.C. (2007, January 3\u20137). A study on two-sided linear prediction approach for land mine detection. Proceedings of the 2007 15th European Signal Processing Conference, Poznan, Poland."},{"key":"ref_23","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"175","DOI":"10.1016\/S0926-9851(01)00089-1","article-title":"Singular value decomposition and wavy reflections in ground-penetrating radar images of base surge deposits","volume":"48","author":"Cagnoli","year":"2001","journal-title":"J. Appl. Geophys."},{"key":"ref_24","unstructured":"Abujarad, F., Nadim, G., and Omar, A. (2005, January 2\u20133). Clutter reduction and detection of landmine objects in ground penetrating radar data using singular value decomposition (SVD). Proceedings of the 3rd International Workshop on Advanced Ground Penetrating Radar, 2005. IWAGPR 2005, Delft, The Netherlands."},{"key":"ref_25","unstructured":"Karlsen, B., Larsen, J., Sorensen, H., and Jakobsen, K. (2001, January 8). Comparison of PCA and ICA based clutter reduction in GPR systems for anti-personal landmine detection. Proceedings of the 11th IEEE Signal Processing Workshop on Statistical Signal Processing (Cat. No.01TH8563), Singapore."},{"key":"ref_26","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Masarik, M.P., Burns, J., Thelen, B.T., Kelly, J., and Havens, T.C. (2015, January 20\u201324). GPR anomaly detection with robust principal component analysis. Proceedings of the Detection and Sensing of Mines, Explosive Objects, and Obscured Targets XX, Baltimore, MD, USA.","DOI":"10.1117\/12.2176571"},{"key":"ref_27","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"789","DOI":"10.1190\/1.1439889","article-title":"Some aspects of fan filtering","volume":"32","author":"Treitel","year":"1967","journal-title":"Geophysics"},{"key":"ref_28","unstructured":"Tong, S., Wang, D., Xu, X., Liu, H., Zhang, J., and Wang, L. (2010, January 28\u201331). Application of pre-stack FK time migration method in high-density seismic exploration. Proceedings of the 2010 Second IITA International Conference on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, Qingdao, China."},{"key":"ref_29","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"A19","DOI":"10.1190\/geo2018-0430.1","article-title":"Slant f-k transform of multichannel seismic surface wave data","volume":"84","author":"Serdyukov","year":"2019","journal-title":"Geophysics"},{"key":"ref_30","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1313","DOI":"10.1109\/LGRS.2019.2948631","article-title":"Seismic signal denoising using fx variational mode decomposition","volume":"17","author":"Liu","year":"2019","journal-title":"IEEE Geosci. Remote Sens. Lett."},{"key":"ref_31","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1433","DOI":"10.1109\/TGRS.2009.2032536","article-title":"F\u2013k Filter Designs to Suppress Direct Waves for Bistatic Ground Penetrating Radar","volume":"48","author":"Hayashi","year":"2010","journal-title":"IEEE Trans. Geosci. Remote Sens."},{"key":"ref_32","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"J43","DOI":"10.1190\/1.3497360","article-title":"Semiautomated suppression of above-surface diffractions in GPR data","volume":"75","author":"Carpentier","year":"2010","journal-title":"Geophysics"},{"key":"ref_33","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Liu, W., Huang, W., Wei, Y., and Chen, X. (2016, January 9\u201311). A noise reduction method based on FK transform for optical fiber hydrophone towed array. Proceedings of the 2016 IEEE\/OES China Ocean Acoustics (COA), Harbin, China.","DOI":"10.1109\/COA.2016.7535728"},{"key":"ref_34","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1145","DOI":"10.1109\/JSTARS.2015.2402211","article-title":"Interference removal for autofocusing of GPR data from RC bridge decks","volume":"8","author":"Wei","year":"2015","journal-title":"IEEE J. Sel. Top. Appl. Earth Obs. Remote Sens."},{"key":"ref_35","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Yang, C., Wang, N., Li, X., Jiao, Y., and Cui, Y. (2021, January 11\u201316). A United Bandpass-Angular Weighting template for Stolt\u2019s f-k in Coherent Plane-Wave Compounding. Proceedings of the 2021 IEEE International Ultrasonics Symposium (IUS), Xi\u2019an, China.","DOI":"10.1109\/IUS52206.2021.9593573"},{"key":"ref_36","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1430","DOI":"10.1109\/8.898777","article-title":"Enhancement of reflected waves in single-hole polarimetric borehole radar measurement","volume":"48","author":"Miwa","year":"2000","journal-title":"IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag."},{"key":"ref_37","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"6572","DOI":"10.1109\/JSTARS.2021.3087668","article-title":"Through-the-wall human respiration detection using UWB impulse radar on hovering drone","volume":"14","author":"Rohman","year":"2021","journal-title":"IEEE J. Sel. Top. Appl. Earth Obs. Remote Sens."},{"key":"ref_38","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"881","DOI":"10.1109\/TPAMI.2002.1017616","article-title":"An efficient k-means clustering algorithm: Analysis and implementation","volume":"24","author":"Kanungo","year":"2002","journal-title":"IEEE Trans. Pattern Anal. Mach. Intell."},{"key":"ref_39","first-page":"1444","article-title":"Suppression of Linear Interference Signal in GPR Profiling by Improved fk Filtering Approach","volume":"50","author":"Zhang","year":"2022","journal-title":"Acta Electron. Sin."},{"key":"ref_40","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"3500705","DOI":"10.1109\/LGRS.2020.3026007","article-title":"Clutter Suppression in GPR B-Scan Images Using Robust Autoencoder","volume":"19","author":"Ni","year":"2022","journal-title":"IEEE Geosci. Remote Sens. Lett."},{"key":"ref_41","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"D\u00e9robert, X., and Pajewski, L. (2018). TU1208 open database of radargrams: The dataset of the IFSTTAR geophysical test site. Remote Sens., 10.","DOI":"10.3390\/rs10040530"}],"container-title":["Remote Sensing"],"original-title":[],"language":"en","link":[{"URL":"https:\/\/www.mdpi.com\/2072-4292\/16\/6\/935\/pdf","content-type":"unspecified","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"similarity-checking"}],"deposited":{"date-parts":[[2025,10,10]],"date-time":"2025-10-10T14:10:19Z","timestamp":1760105419000},"score":1,"resource":{"primary":{"URL":"https:\/\/www.mdpi.com\/2072-4292\/16\/6\/935"}},"subtitle":[],"short-title":[],"issued":{"date-parts":[[2024,3,7]]},"references-count":41,"journal-issue":{"issue":"6","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2024,3]]}},"alternative-id":["rs16060935"],"URL":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/rs16060935","relation":{},"ISSN":["2072-4292"],"issn-type":[{"value":"2072-4292","type":"electronic"}],"subject":[],"published":{"date-parts":[[2024,3,7]]}}}