A technology demonstrator for a 0.5 m x 0.5 m fully electronic digital beamforming mm-Wave imaging system

This paper describes a demonstrator for a millimeter-wave imaging system, showing for the first time the feasibility of an active fully electronic imaging system in the 80 GHz region using a 2D planar sparse array as an imaging sensor. The demonstrator is capable of capturing images of living persons. In this work, the requirements regarding measurement speed are derived. The system architecture is described in detail using block diagrams. The reference channel concept, the signal distribution network, the modular architecture and the ADC / signal processing concepts are explained. Selected measurement results of key system parameters are presented. mm-Wave images of living persons are shown, including examples demonstrating the effects of movement during the measurement.