Screening vehicles for stowaways using aperture synthesis passive millimetre wave imaging

This paper presents part of a feasibility study into the use of the aperture synthesis passive imaging technique to screen vehicles for persons. The aperture synthesis technique is introduced and shown how in the near-field regime of a vehicle screening scenario that a three-dimensional imaging capability is possible. A suggested antenna receiver array is presented and the three-dimensional point spread function which this enables is calculated by simulation. This shows that over the majority of the inside of the vehicle the spatial resolution in all three spatial dimensions is of or less than the radiation wavelength, which at the suggested operational radiation frequency of 20 GHz is 1.5 cm. A radiation transport model that estimates the radiation temperatures of persons and backgrounds when viewing the vehicle either from the side or the top is presented, such a model being useful in the design of vehicle screening systems and as a basis for interpretation codes to assist operators in recognising persons in vehicles.