Naomi Alexander, Byron Alderman, Fernando Allona, Peter Frijlink, Ramón Gonzalo, Manfred Hägelen, Asier Ibáñez, Viktor Krozer, Marian Langford, Ernesto Limiti, Duncan Platt, Marek Schikora, Hui Wang, Marc Andree Weber
The challenge for any security screening system is to identify potentially harmful objects such as weapons and explosives concealed under clothing. Classical border and security checkpoints are no longer capable of fulfilling the demands of today’s ever growing security requirements, especially with respect to the high throughput generally required which entails a high detection rate of threat material and a low false alarm rate. TeraSCREEN proposes to develop an innovative concept of multi-frequency multi-mode Terahertz and millimeter-wave detection with new automatic detection and classification functionalities. The system developed will demonstrate, at a live control point, the safe automatic detection and classification of objects concealed under clothing, whilst respecting privacy and increasing current throughput rates. This innovative screening system will combine multi-frequency, multi-mode images taken by passive and active subsystems which will scan the subjects and obtain complementary spatial and spectral information, thus allowing for automatic threat recognition. The TeraSCREEN project, which will run from 2013 to 2016, has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme under the Security Call. This paper will describe the project objectives and approach.
N. Alexander, P. Frijlink, J. Hendricks, E. Limiti, S. Löffler, C. Macdonald, H. Maher, L. Pettersson, D. Platt, P. Rice, M. Riester, D. Schulze, V. Vassilev
The FP7 Research for SME project IMAGINE - a low cost, high performance monolithic passive mm-wave imager
front-end is described in this paper. The main innovation areas for the project are: i) the development of a 94 GHz
radiometer chipset and matching circuits suitable for monolithic integration. The chipset consists of a W-band low noise
amplifier, fabricated using the commercially available OMMIC D007IH GaAs mHEMT process, and a zero bias
resonant interband tunneling diode, fabricated using a patented epi-layer structure that is lattice matched to the same
D007IH process; ii) the development of a 94 GHz antenna adapted for low cost manufacturing methods with
performance suitable for real-time imaging; iii) the development of a low cost liquid crystal polymer PCB build-up
technology with performance suitable for the integration and assembly of a 94 GHz radiometer module; iv) the assembly
of technology demonstrator modules. The results achieved in these areas are presented.
Belgium leads the tenth initiative in the CNAD Programme of Work for the Defense Against Terrorism (PoW
DAT), dealing with Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP). The BELCOAST 09 event, comprising a series of
technology demonstrations, was organized to tackle the need for an event that brings together the operational,
armaments and technological communities in the field of CIP. A counter terrorism scenario has been created:
Terrorist with body-borne IED approaching the entrance of an installation, and a millimeter-wave imager's ability to
detect IEDs has been demonstrated. The results of this scenario-based demonstration are presented in this paper.
The chance of suicide bomber attacks against troops in the Theatre of Operations is currently quite high. Most of the
time checkpoints and compound gates are not equipped with the appropriate equipment to screen for potential suicide
bombers. The ultimate solution would be to be able to perform stand-off screening under various weather conditions
whilst avoiding contact between Force Protection personnel and potential suicide bombers. Radiation in the millimeterwave
and the lower Terahertz range, having the useful property of being able to penetrate clothing in addition to fog and
rain, makes it a clear candidate for imaging in this situation. A study has been made simulating real case scenarios to test
practical detection performance and stand-off distances at a range of frequencies in this band, the results of which will be
presented.
It is well known that millimeter-wave technology provides an important imaging capability through clothing and adverse
weather conditions, among others. Alfa Imaging has undertaken a project to study the different applications of mm-wave
imaging. An important part of this project is the measurement of material properties of a number of clothing and
packaging samples in the frequency range from 40 to 306GHz. This task has been undertaken by the Antenna Group at
the Public University of Navarra using an ABmm Network Analyser. The resulting data has been analysed and is
presented in this paper along with example images and conclusions on the ideal operating frequency for the various
applications studied.
We describe a high performance optomechanically scanned millimeter-wave imager intended to monitor the ground movement of aircraft in adverse weather conditions. It employs two counter-rotating mirrors that are tilted about their axes of rotation. They simulate the linear scan of a single high speed, large aperture flapping mirror. When used with a linear receiver array, they can produce a 2-D scan of the scene at TV rates. In the present application, they were used with a single receiver and a large flapping mirror to produce a 2-D scan of the scene ±10 deg vertically and 60 deg horizontally. One of the rotating mirrors has a concave surface and acts as the focusing element in the imager. The two mirrors are driven from a single servo motor using timing belts and toothed pulleys. The flapping mirror is slaved to the motion of the rotating disks using an electronic cam. The single channel 94-GHz receiver consisted of an InP LNA followed by a down converter and a detector. The video output passes to an A/D converter and is displayed on a conventional PC. This system has virtually 100% transmission and can be used at any waveband.
This paper describes a new opto-mechanical scanner that is able to meet the established requirements for mm-wave imaging in remote sensing and security applications. The ideal system would employ a 2-D array of electronically scanned receivers, but at present their cost is prohibitively high. Fortunately low cost, high performance, opto-mechanically scanned imagers are able to meet the current requirements. They can establish the market and pave the way for lower-cost receiver developments, necessary for electronic scanning. An opto-mechanical scanner should be able to scan a 2-D image of the scene in real-time, with a linear raster scan pattern. It should have high optical efficiency so that an imager can achieve the required thermal sensitivity with the minimum number of receivers. It should be compact to fit inside a small space envelope. The size of the imager should be dominated by the size of the collection aperture and not by any relay optics. In mm-wave imaging this size is controlled by the required spatial resolution and the space available. It is also desirable that the scanner employs the minimum number of frequency-selective optical components. This ensures that it can easily operate at any wavelength, and be active or passive. The new scanning arrangement meets these requirements and is being developed into a high performance, low-cost, compact prototype system that hopefully will meet the present and future needs for mm-wave and terahertz imaging.
This paper reviews the formation of an image with coherent and incoherent radiation. It discusses the various mm-wave methods for electronic beam-forming and beam-steering such as phased array, leaky-wave antennas, up-conversion, tapped delay lines and digital beam-forming techniques. These methods are related in the paper to their optical analogues of beam-forming and steering by a lens and the measurement of the aperture function in the case of holography. It concludes that digital techniques will be used in the future when the cost of receivers is reduced but that at present opto-mechanical techniques are more cost effective. A high efficiency, compact opto-mechanical system is described. This is able to operate at any wavelength and be active or passive. Typical 94GHz images are presented.
Passive millimeter-wave imaging has excellent all weather capability but is severely diffraction limited and requires large apertures to give adequate spatial resolution. Linear restoration can enhance the resolution by a factor of two, while under favorable conditions non-linear restoration can enhance it by factors of four. The amount of enhancement possible is generally limited by the amount of noise present in the original observed image. Preprocessing can reduce the effect of this noise. In many non-linear restoration techniques the amount of high spatial frequency introduced into the restored image is uncontrolled. This problem has been overcome through the use of the Lorentzian algorithm, which imposes a statistical constraint on the distribution of gradients within the restored image. Another way of applying a constraint is to selectively restore an image. The high spatial frequency content of an image exists largely at edges and sharp features and needs to be restored, while the smoother background between features contains fewer high frequencies and needs less restoration. Adaptive non-linear restoration techniques have been investigated whereby the amount of restoration applied to an image is a function of the first and second derivative of the image intensity. Images are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of these methods.
Passive millimeter-wave imaging has excellent all weather capability but requires large apertures to give adequate spatial resolution. Linear restoration can enhance the resolution by a factor of two, while under favorable conditions non-linear restoration can enhance it by a factor of four. The amount of enhancement possible is generally limited by the amount of noise present in the original observed image. Preprocessing can reduce the effect of this noise and the image may be selectively restored. The high spatial frequency content of an image exists largely at edges and sharp features and these may be restored using non-linear restoration techniques. The smoother background between these features contains fewer high frequencies and needs less restoration. Adaptive non-linear restoration techniques have been investigated whereby the amount of restoration applied to an image is a function of the first and second derivative of the image intensity. In many non-linear restoration techniques the amount of high spatial frequency content introduced into the restored image is uncontrolled. This problem has been overcome through the use of the Lorentzian algorithm, which imposes a statistical constraint on the distribution of gradients within the restored image. Recently attempts have been made to explain why the distribution of gradients within an image is Lorentzian in terms of randomly distributed gradients of random size. Images are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of these methods.
This paper describes a high performance opto-mechanically scanned mm-wave imager intended to monitor the ground movement of aircraft in adverse weather conditions. It employs two counter-rotating mirrors that are tilted about their axes of rotation. They simulate the linear scan of a single high speed, large aperture flapping mirror. When used with a linear receiver array they can produce a two-dimensional scan of the scene at TV rates. In the present application they were used with a single receiver and a large flapping mirror to produce a two-dimensional scan of the scene of ±10° vertically and 60deg; horizontally. One of the rotating mirrors had a concave surface and acted as the focusing element in the imager. The two mirrors were driven from a single servo motor using timing belts and toothed pulleys. The flapping mirror was slaved to the motion of the rotating discs using an electronic cam. The single channel 94GHz receiver consisted of an InP LNA followed by a down-converter and a detector. The video output passed to an A/D converter and was displayed on a conventional PC. This system has virtually 100% transmission and can be used at any waveband.
This paper discusses the use of constraints when super-resolving passive millimeter wave (PMMW) images. A PMMW imager has good all-weather imaging capability but requires a large collection aperture to obtain adequate spatial resolution due to the diffraction limit and the long wavelengths involved. A typical aperture size for a system operating at 94GHz would be 1m in diameter. This size may be reduced if image restoration techniques are employed. A factor of two in recognition range may be achieved using a linear technique such as a Wiener filter; while a factor of four is available using non-linear techniques. These non-linear restoration methods generate the missing high frequency information above the pass band in band limited images. For this bandwidth extension to generate genuine high frequencies, it is necessary to restore the image subject to constraints. These constraints should be applied directly to the scene content rather than to any noise that might also be present. The merits of the available super-resolution techniques are discussed with particular reference to the Lorentzian method. Attempts are made to explain why the distribution of gradients within an image is Lorentzian by assuming that an image has randomly distributed gradients of random size. Any increase in sharpness of an image frequently results in an increase in the noise present. The effect of noise and image sharpness on the ability of a human observer to recognise an object in the scene is discussed with reference to a recent model of human perception.
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