The problem of sensing a medium by several sensors and retrieving
interesting features is a very general one. The basic framework of the
problem is generally the same for applications from MRI,
tomography, Radar SAR imaging to subsurface imaging, even though the
data acquisition processes, sensing geometries and sensed properties are
different. In this thesis we introduced a new perspective to the
problem of remote sensing and information retrieval by studying the
problem of subsurface imaging using GPR and seismic sensors.
We have shown that if the sensed medium is sparse in some domain then it can be imaged using many fewer measurements than required by the standard methods. This leads to much lower data acquisition times and better images representing the medium. We have used the ideas from Compressive Sensing, which show that a small number of random measurements about a signal is sufficient to completely characterize it, if the signal is sparse or compressible in some domain. Although we have applied our ideas to the subsurface imaging problem, our results are general and can be extended to other remote sensing applications.
A second objective in remote sensing is information retrieval
which involves searching for important features in the computed image of
the medium. In this thesis we focus on detecting buried structures like
pipes, and tunnels in computed GPR or seismic images. The problem of
finding these structures in high clutter and noise conditions, and
finding them faster than the standard shape detecting methods like the
Hough transform is analyzed.
One of the most important contributions of this thesis is, where the
sensing and the information retrieval stages are unified in a single
framework using compressive sensing. Instead of taking lots of standard
measurements to compute the image of the medium and search the
necessary information in the computed image, a much smaller number of
measurements as random projections are taken. The
data acquisition and information retrieval stages are unified by using a
data model dictionary that connects the information to the sensor data.Ph.D.Committee Chair: McClellan, James H.; Committee Member: Romberg, Justin K.; Committee Member: Scott, Waymond R. Jr.; Committee Member: Vela, Patricio A.; Committee Member: Vidakovic, Bran
