Photonic Assisted Microwave Near-Field Imager

The first nanophotonic near-field imager is reported that optically processes the received microwave signals to form a 121-pixel image. It achieves 4.8° spatial resolution and is significantly smaller and more power efficient than the all-electrical counterparts.

1. Introduction

High resolution near-field microwave imaging has many applications from through-the-wall imaging to tumor detection [1], [2]. In these systems, the resolution is inversely proportional to the signal bandwidth. Therefore, to realize high resolution imagers, ultra-wideband (UWB) signals, composed of a train of short time-domain pulses, are commonly used.