Video-rate passive millimeter-wave imager

Passive millimeter-wave imager (PMI) technology provides a powerful sensor capability for military and commercial imaging applications in adverse weather. Recent advances in high-frequency antennas, MMW electronics, and high-speed signal processing, have brought real-time, high-contrast, high-resolution, wide-field of view PMI into the realm of technological feasibility. However, the prohibitive cost and volume of previous PMI architectures have proved impractical for all but a few scientific implementations. This situation has precluded PMI usage in several applications with demonstrable benefits, such as aircraft landing, and radio-silent airborne surveillance/battle damage assessment. A new PMI architecture has been demonstrated with a high frame rate (30 Hz) with order of magnitude reductions in cost and volume relative to previous designs. Highlights of this new PMI architecture will be presented along with examples of video-rate imaging data representing its current capability for airborne imaging