Three-Dimensional Imaging of Terahertz Circular SAR with Sparse Linear Array

Due to the non-contact detection ability of radar and the harmlessness of terahertz waves to the human body, three-dimensional (3D) imaging using terahertz synthetic aperture radar (SAR) is an efficient method of security detection in public areas. To achieve high-resolution and all aspect imaging, circular trajectory movement of radar and linear sensor array along the height direction were used in this study. However, the short wavelength of terahertz waves makes it practically impossible for the hardware to satisfy the half-wavelength spacing condition to avoid grating lobes. To solve this problem, a sparse linear array model based on the equivalent phase center principle was established. With the designed imaging geometry and corresponding echo signal model, a 3D imaging algorithm was derived. Firstly, the phase-preserving algorithm was adopted to obtain the 2D image of the ground plane for each sensor. Secondly, the sparse recovery method was applied to accomplish the scattering coefficient reconstruction along the height direction. After reconstruction of all the range-azimuth cells was accomplished, the final 3D image was obtained. Numerical simulations and experiments using terahertz radar were performed. The imaging results verify the effectiveness of the 3D imaging algorithm for the proposed model and validate the feasibility of terahertz radar applied in security detection.