UWB microwave imaging system including circular array antenna

The paper describes the design of an ultra wideband (UWB) microwave imaging system employing a 12-element circular array antenna. The array uses compact tapered slot antenna (TSA) elements operating over 3.1–10.6 GHz band. The elements of the array are activated by two coaxial SP6T switches that are connected to a vector network analyser (VNA) to achieve monostatic or multi-static radar modes of operation. In addition, the array is moved using a mechanical cylindrical scanning subsystem. This electronic/mechanical sub-system allows a fast highresolution scan of an imaged object. The paper describes the reasons for choosing this particular imaging system configuration and provides full construction details. Also shown are the imaging results of a circular plastic container filled with a vegetable oil and small diameter circular cylindrical targets using a novel image reconstruction algorithm.