Near-field Imaging Algorithm Research Articles

An Elliptical Bipolar Cylindrical Coordinates Based Mixed Domain Near-Field Imaging Algorithm for Scanning 1-D Nonuniform Sparse MIMO Arrays

An Elliptical Bipolar Cylindrical Coordinates Based Mixed Domain Near-Field Imaging Algorithm for Scanning 1-D Nonuniform Sparse MIMO Arrays

A Near-Field Imaging Algorithm Based on Angular Spectrum Theory for Synthetic Aperture Interferometric Radiometer

For the near-field synthetic aperture interferometric radiometer (SAIR), the Fourier transform relationship between the visibility function and the near-field brightness temperature (BT) distribution is not valid. It is a challenging task for near-field SAIR imaging to realize very close-range accurate imaging with a large field of view (FOV). This article presents a new SAIR near-field imaging algorithm based on the angular spectrum theory to realize the passive millimeter-wave (PMMW) imaging, called synthetic-angular-spectrum imaging (SASI) algorithm. This SASI algorithm mainly addresses data samples of a 4-D visibility function acquired from planar arrays. First, we invert 4-D visibility samples into the angular spectrum domain via the Fourier transformation. The obtained angular spectrum data cannot be directly used to estimate the near-field BT distribution. Second, a dedicated phase factor compensation is adopted for handling this problem. The dimension-reducing accumulation is employed to generate the synthetic angular spectrum (SAS) of near-field BT distribution. Finally, we reconstruct the BT image by using the generated SAS data. Simulation and experiment results show that the presented SASI algorithm has the superiority on image reconstruction quality, especially for the off-axis regions, compared with the existing near-field SAIR imaging methods.

Efficient Near-Field Imaging Using Cylindrical MIMO Arrays

Multiple-input–multiple-output (MIMO) array-based millimeter-wave (MMW) imaging has a tangible prospect in applications of concealed weapons detection. A near-field imaging algorithm based on wavenumber domain processing is proposed for a cylindrical MIMO array scheme with uniformly spaced transmit and receive antennas over both the vertical and horizontal-arc directions. The spectrum aliasing associated with the proposed MIMO array is analyzed through a zero-filling discrete-time Fourier transform. The analysis shows that an undersampled array can be used in recovering the MMW image by a wavenumber domain algorithm. The requirements for the antenna interelement spacing of the MIMO array are delineated. Numerical simulations as well as comparisons with the backprojection algorithm are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.

Approach for ISAR imaging of near-field targets based on coordinate conversion and image interpolation

Inverse synthetic aperture radar (ISAR) imaging of near-field targets is potentially useful in some specific applications, which makes it very important to efficiently produce high-quality image of the near-field target. In this paper, the simplified target model with uniform linear motion is applied to the near-field target imaging, which overcomes the complexity of the traditional near-field imaging algorithm. According to this signal model, the method based on coordinate conversion and image interpolation combined with the range-Doppler (R-D) algorithm is proposed to correct the near-field distortion problem. Compared with the back-projection (BP) algorithm, the proposed method produces better focused ISAR images of the near-field target, and decreases the computation complexity significantly. Experimental results of the simulated data have demonstrated the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed method.

Three-Dimensional Near-Field MIMO Array Imaging Using Range Migration Techniques

This paper presents a 3-D near-field imaging algorithm that is formulated for 2-D wideband multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) imaging array topology. The proposed MIMO range migration technique performs the image reconstruction procedure in the frequency-wavenumber domain. The algorithm is able to completely compensate the curvature of the wavefront in the near-field through a specifically defined interpolation process and provides extremely high computational efficiency by the application of the fast Fourier transform. The implementation aspects of the algorithm and the sampling criteria of a MIMO aperture are discussed. The image reconstruction performance and computational efficiency of the algorithm are demonstrated both with numerical simulations and measurements using 2-D MIMO arrays. Real-time 3-D near-field imaging can be achieved with a real-aperture array by applying the proposed MIMO range migration techniques.