Radiometric and Spatial Resolution Constraints in Millimeter-Wave Close-Range Passive Screener Systems

• Published in: IEEE transactions on geoscience and remote sensing Vol. 51; no. 4; pp. 2327 - 2336
• Main Authors: Nova, E., Romeu, J., Torres, F., Pablos, M., Riera, J. M., Broquetas, A., Jofre, L.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York, NY IEEE 01.04.2013; Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
• Subjects: Aperture synthesis; Applied geophysics; Arrays; Earth sciences; Earth, ocean, space; Exact sciences and technology; Imaging; Internal geophysics; near-field (NF) imaging; Noise measurement; passive screeners; Radiometers; radiometric sensitivity; Sensitivity; Spatial resolution; antenna; waves; synthesis; passive screeners; radiometric sensitivity; remote sensing; near-field; nearfield (NF) imaging; Aperture synthesis; spatial resolution; geometry; performances; Pixel; direction; distortion
• ISSN: 0196-2892; 1558-0644
• DOI: 10.1109/TGRS.2012.2211025

This paper presents a comparative study of the radiometric sensitivity and spatial resolution of three near-field (NF) passive screener systems: real aperture, 1-D synthetic aperture (SA), and 2-D SA radiometers are compared. The analytical expressions for the radiometric resolution, the number of required antennas, and the number of pixels in the image are derived taking into account the distortion produced by the NF geometry at nonboresight directions where the distortion is dominant. Based on the theoretical results, a performance comparison among the studied systems is carried out to show the advantages and drawbacks when using the radiometers in a close-range screening application. Moreover, the screener performance in a close-range environment is discussed from the results obtained in the aforementioned comparison.