Imaging simulation modeling for millimeter wave synthetic aperture imaging radiometer in near-field

Due to the fact that theoretical analysis and instrument construction for antenna array of synthetic aperture imaging radiometer (SAIR) are both complicated, and designers usually hope to predict the imaging effect and analysis the influence of the parameters of SAIR before the system design. The simulation is a very useful method in the system design of SAIR. This paper is devoted to establishing an accurate imaging model of near-field millimeter wave SAIR for simulating the imaging process that include target radiating electromagnetic wave, antenna collecting target radiation and transforming them into RF signal, and antenna array collecting the visibility function. By using the equivalent complex baseband signals to represent the practical target radiation and RF signals in time domain, the efficiency of this simulation model is improved significantly. Some characteristics of near-filed millimeter wave SAIR are verified by a series of simulation experiments, and the effectiveness of this imaging model is tested by these simulation experiments. Results of the imaging simulation experiment show that this model is an efficient, feasible imaging model for near-field millimeter wave SAIR.