Experimental Results of a 3D Millimeter-Wave Compressive-Reflector-Antenna Imaging System

TL;DR

This paper reports the first experimental demonstration of a 3D millimeter-wave compressive-reflector-antenna imaging system that uses 3D-printed, coated reflectors with pseudo-random coding to achieve effective 3D imaging without complex mechanical scanning.

Contribution

It introduces a novel 3D-printed CRA with pseudo-random surface coating for mm-wave imaging, eliminating the need for mechanical scanning and phase shifters, and demonstrates successful 3D reconstruction.

Findings

Successful 3D reconstruction of a metallic target

Effective use of pseudo-random coding for spatial diversity

Elimination of mechanical scanning components

Abstract

This letter presents the first experimental results of our three-dimensional (3D) millimeter-wave (mm-wave) Compressive-Reflector-Antenna (CRA) imaging system. In this prototype, the CRA is 3D-printed and coated with a metallic spray to easily introduce pseudo-random scatterers on the surface of a traditional reflector antenna (TRA). The CRA performs a pseudo random coding of the incident wavefront, thus adding spatial diversity in the imaging region and enabling the effective use of compressive sensing (CS) and imaging techniques. The CRA is fed with a multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) radar, which consists of four transmitting and four receiving ports. Consequently, the mechanical scanning parts and phase shifters, which are necessary in conventional physical or synthetic aperture arrays, are not needed in this system. Experimental results show the effectiveness of the prototype to perform a successful 3D reconstruction of a T-shaped metallic target.