Real-Time Imaging System for Millimeter Wave Synthetic Aperture Radar Sensors

In this contribution, a real-time imaging system alongside its processing chain for millimeter wave (mmWave) synthetic aperture radar (SAR) sensors operating at 240 GHz is presented. In addition to real-time capability, the SAR imaging system is manually moved on a linear track without precise stepper motors. Instead, the current position is obtained by a second radar measurement at a far lower frequency with an additional reference target. By this means, the image of the considered scene can be obtained in mere seconds. To allow real-time processing of the measurement data, a signal processing chain based on separate threads is established and further enhanced by using a graphics-processing unit (GPU). Due to the large imaging bandwidth of 50 GHz, the image system can be used to obtain high-resolution sub-surface images of e.g. construction materials.