Development of a passive millimeter-wave imaging system

Abstract

Millimeter-wave imaging systems are currently being developed for a wide range of applications, including remote sensing, all-weather aircraft landing, and concealed weapon detection. In this paper, we designed and tested of the passive millimeter-wave imaging system using focal plane approach. The proposed system consists of two parts. The first part is a 94 GHz band millimeter imaging part which is coupled to a dielectric lens, a horn antenna, two low noise amplifiers, and a diode detector. The second part is a control part. The control part consists of 2-axes Cartesian robots, and a 16-bit data acquisition (DAQ). The 2-axes Cartesian robot should be able to scan a 2-D image of the scene, with a raster scanning method. The passive millimeter-wave image of 50 × 50 pixels is acquired, and is immediately displayed and stored for post processing. The experimental results are presented to demonstrate the feasibility of the passive millimeter-wave imaging system. In order to improve the image quality, interpolation methods are applied.