Hardware realization of a 2 m × 1 m fully electronic real-time mm-wave imaging system

A first generation of active mm-wave imaging devices is nowadays commercially available for industrial and security applications. Mostly, these systems use mechanical scanning to reduce channel count. The availability of state-of-the-art semiconductor technology enables reliably building high-channel-count fully electronic mm-wave imaging systems at E-Band frequencies, including parallel signal processing. Without the need for mechanical scanning, true real-time operation becomes possible. This work describes a prototype of such an imaging system for personnel screening applications. For the first time, hardware that is capable of capturing full 2 m × 1 m images of living persons in the 80 GHz region in real-time is demonstrated. An overview of the imaging system is given including detailed hardware description. The measurement flow is explained and the underlying link budget is derived.