Real-Time Multiview SAR Imaging Using a Portable Microwave Camera With Arbitrary Movement

This paper presents the first demonstrator of a portable, multiview, high-resolution, 3-D, and real-time microwave imaging system. The system is based on a recently developed real-time 3-D microwave camera, which performs quasi-monostatic acquisitions, equipped with an optical depth camera, providing target surface profile information. In addition, the entire system can be arbitrarily moved along the target performing microwave and depth camera synchronized acquisitions from different views with a twofold purpose, namely: 1) enabling a coverage area much larger than that possible with a static imaging system and b) allowing for incorporation of several tilt angles (or views) to enhance capturing specular reflection imaging data to improve the overall image quality. At each scanning position, the imaging data from the microwave camera are processed to build a local 3-D microwave image. The information is then merged, using recently proposed techniques for multiview synthetic aperture imaging, to compose the global image. The synchronized optical camera depth acquisitions enable tracking the entire imager movements so that the position and attitude are known. Moreover, the data acquired by the depth camera are also use to build a complementary 3-D outer surface profile model of the target, producing a combined and realistic image of the internal and external geometries of the target. Finally, the performance of the combined system is evaluated using several examples related to hidden contraband covered by clothing (i.e., people screening).