Comparison of Terahertz Transceiver Array Topologies in Multiobject Imaging

We investigate the effect of side lobe level and multipath propagation in millimeter-wave and terahertz imaging systems for various transceiver array topologies. This work considers practical limitations in high-resolution active imaging systems and focuses on electrically large, planar antenna array topologies. As such, we investigate the imaging performance of sparse transmitting/receiving (Tx/Rx) array topologies that enable high angular/spatial resolution imaging with minimum hardware complexity. We show that properly tapering the sparse array excitation can mitigate image clutter caused by high side lobes and sparse arrays are more vulnerable to multipath reflections and clutter in dense scenes with highly reflective surfaces. We present both full-wave numerical analysis and laboratory experiments (250–300 GHz) to verify and compare the imaging array performance for several exemplary scenes.