Passive millimeter-wave imaging using a sparse phased-array antenna

Passive Millimeter-wave Imaging (PMI) technology provides a powerful sensor capability for military and commercial imaging applications, during day or night, and in adverse weather. Recent advances in high-frequency antennas, MMW electronics, and high-speed signal processing, have brought real-time, high-contrast, high-resolution, wide-field PMI into the realm of technological feasibility. However, the substantial size, weight, and cost of previous PMI architectures have proved impractical for all but a few scientific implementations, creating a barrier to large-volume production. This reality has precluded PMI usage in several applications with demonstrable benefits, such as aircraft navigation and landing, radio-silent airborne surveillance/battle damage assessment, concealed weapons detection (CWD), or through-wall imaging. A new PMI architecture has been demonstrated which allows this wide-area, near-real-time staring capability with significant reductions in size, weight, and cost relative to previous designs. Specifics of this new PMI architecture will be presented along with a host of imaging data representing its current capability for airborne imaging, CWD, and through-wall imaging.