ImpDAR: an open-source impulse radar processor

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Documents

  • David A. Lilien
  • Benjamin H. Hills
  • Joshua Driscol
  • Robert Jacobel
  • Knut Christianson

Despite widespread use of radio-echo sounding (RES) in glaciology and broad distribution of processed radar products, the glaciological community has no standard software for processing impulse RES data. Dependable, fast and collection-system/platform-independent processing flows could facilitate comparison between datasets and allow full utilization of large impulse RES data archives and new data. Here, we present ImpDAR, an open-source, cross-platform, impulse radar processor and interpreter, written primarily in Python. The utility of this software lies in its collection of established tools into a single, open-source framework. ImpDAR aims to provide a versatile standard that is accessible to radar-processing novices and useful to specialists. It can read data from common commercial ground-penetrating radars (GPRs) and some custom-built RES systems. It performs all the standard processing steps, including bandpass and horizontal filtering, time correction for antenna spacing, geolocation and migration. After processing data, ImpDAR's interpreter includes several plotting functions, digitization of reflecting horizons, calculation of reflector strength and export of interpreted layers. We demonstrate these capabilities on two datasets: deep (similar to 3000 m depth) data collected with a custom (3 MHz) system in northeast Greenland and shallow (

Original languageEnglish
JournalAnnals of Glaciology
Volume61
Issue number81
Pages (from-to)114-123
Number of pages10
ISSN0260-3055
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 29 Jun 2020

    Research areas

  • Ice thickness measurements, radio-echo sounding, remote sensing, ICE-STREAM, WEST ANTARCTICA, BASAL CONDITIONS, ACCUMULATION, GLACIER, FLOW, MIGRATION, FIRN, REFLECTORS, THICKNESS

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