Sparse linear array design for a short range imaging radar

This paper presents the design of an active short range imaging system in the Ka-band (26.6 - 40 GHz). The sensor is a multistatic linear array which is moved perpendicular to the array dimension for the purpose of 3D imaging. By sequentially switching on the transmitters and simultaneous reception of the scattered field by each receiver, a fast sampling of the 2D aperture plane is achieved. To reduce the number of parallel receive channels, a thinned array on the base of sparse periodic arrays (SPA) was developed. Due to non focussing antenna elements, numerical reconstruction algorithms, for near field conditions, have to be applied for a high lateral resolution. First simulation results verify the imaging quality of this concept and the functionality of the proposed reconstruction algorithm.