Inverse synthetic aperture radar imaging for concealed object detection on a naturally walking person

This paper describes the architecture of a microwave radar system intended for imaging concealed objects under clothing as a subject walks through the inspection area. The system uses the principle of inverse aperture which is achieved by a person’s movement past a stationary microwave sensor array. In the system, the vertical resolution is achieved by arranging microwave sensors vertically while the horizontal resolution is due to the subject’s horizontal motion. The positioning of the objects is achieved by employing a synchronous video sensor that allows coherent radar signal processing. A possible radar signal processing technique based on signal accumulation is described. Numerical experiments are conducted with the described object trajectory model. The influence of positioning errors attributed to the video positioning system is also modeled numerically. An experimental setup is designed and proposed to evaluate the suggested signal processing techniques on real data with an electro-mechanical scanner and single transceiver. It is suggested that the signal acquisition with the system can be accomplished using the stop motion technique, in which a series of changing stationary scenes is sampled and processed. Experimental radar images are demonstrated for stationary objects with concealed items and considered as reference images. Further development of the system is suggested.