Cylindrical Microwave Body Scanner—–Part I: System Configuration and Image Reconstruction

A cylindrical body scanner for security purpose, which can be deployed at checkpoints for security, is presented in this article. To save cost, a dynamic antenna policy was adopted, which included two antenna masts with each carrying 96 transmitters and 64 receivers. Each mast can rotate around the body by 180°; thus, a collection of 360° panorama signals can be made. A full scan by the proposed imaging system took approximately 1.5 s. The cylindrical-shaped antenna array is able to provide a larger effective synthetical aperture than a flat array, resulting in improved spatial resolution. Frequency-modulated continuous wave (FMCW) method is utilized to record 256 frequency responses evenly spread between 16.2 and 41.7 GHz. The collected signals were then processed by a fast Fourier transform (FFT) algorithm in the cylindrical coordinates to produce a 3-D image, which took another 1.5 s on a GPU. Reconstructed body image validated the presented scanner.