A Millimeter-Wave Personnel Imager Based on the E-Band Sparse Polyline Array

In this work, an E-band personnel imager based on a sparse polyline array has been developed. A sparse polyline array scheme is proposed and fabricated with the customized transceiver microwave monolithic integrated circuit (MMIC) chipsets, circular polarimetric transceiver antennas, and an intermediate frequency signal bus transmission architecture (IFBTA) for saving hardware cost. A methodology is proposed for the reconstruction of targets that incorporates an array calibration method, a three-view imaging mode, and a modified imaging algorithm with optimizations realized by compute unified device architecture (CUDA) computation. The efficacy of the system is demonstrated by simulations and experimental results, which reveal that the polyline scheme can effectively address the problem of the blind areas on both sides of the person. Finally, we developed the system with a frequency band of 69–81 GHz, a cross-range resolution of 2 mm, and an imaging computation time of less than 500 ms. To the best of our knowledge, this work is the first commercially developed personnel imager using a sparse polyline array scheme.