Status of VESAS - A fully-electronic microwave imaging radiometer system

Abstract

Remote sensing in the frequency range from 1 – 300 GHz can be applied to security and reconnaissance. Examples are the observation of sensitive areas or the performance of personal security checks in order to detect concealed weapons or explosives, both being potential threats in our world of a growing international terrorism. For frequently used security gateways it is important to provide a high through-put rate in order to minimize the queue time. Consequently fast imaging systems are necessary. In this paper the conceptual idea of a fully-electronic microwave imaging radiometer system is introduced. The scanning mechanism for the two dimensions is divided into a frequency scan in one direction and the method of aperture synthesis in the other. The overall goal here is to design a low-cost, fully-electronic imaging system with a frame rate around one second at Ka band.