Passive millimeter-wave camera with interferometric processing

Abstract

A proto-type passive millimeter-wave (MMW) camera with interferometric processing has been developed. The purpose is to confirm the feasibility of the interferometric MMW camera and to study the characteristics of MMW images. In this paper, the principle and the feature of the interferometric MMW camera is described. Also, the hardware configuration and the image processing algorithm are presented. This proto-type camera is comprised of the minimum configuration as an interferometric imager which consists of two sets of a W-band front end with a horn antenna, a receiver, and an A/D converter, a high-speed processing hardware, and a computer. The position of these two antennas with W-band front-end moves on the precision linear slider in horizontal and vertical axis. The coherently amplified two channel signals are digitized and processed in the hardware processor. The process is comprised of phase error compensation, correlation of all combination of each axis data, and integration to improve the signal to noise ratio. The computer input the integrated data to make an image by matched filter processing. The integration time is from 1mS to 10S depending on required integration gain. The maximum synthesized antenna aperture size is 1m for horizontal axis and 50cm for vertical axis. Because it takes certain time to receive by the moving antennas, only the targets without motion are imaged by this proto-type camera. The processed images will be shown. Also, future plan for a real-time camera using this technique is presented.