학술논문

Passive broadband terahertz camera for stand-off concealed threat identification using superconducting antenna-coupled microbolometers
Document Type
Conference
Source
2008 38th European Microwave Conference Microwave Conference, 2008. EuMC 2008. 38th European. :943-946 Oct, 2008
Subject
Components, Circuits, Devices and Systems
Engineered Materials, Dielectrics and Plasmas
Fields, Waves and Electromagnetics
Aerospace
Communication, Networking and Broadcast Technologies
Photonics and Electrooptics
Broadband antennas
Cameras
Optical imaging
Linear antenna arrays
Optical arrays
Weapons
Frequency
Clothing
Superconducting materials
Spatial resolution
Language
Abstract
Over the past several years, many groups have developed both millimeter-wave as well as terahertz imaging systems for concealed weapons detection. Typically, systems operating at the millimetre-wave range benefit from good transmission of these frequencies through common clothing materials, but provide only modest spatial resolving power at distances larger than a few meters for practical aperture sizes (dap≪1 m). Hence, these existing systems fall in the category of anomaly detectors, i.e. they intrinsically lack the performance to discriminate threat items from innocuous objects, such as cell phones, mp3 players and the like. Moreover, the radiometric performance of a passive imager has to be better than 0.5 K per frame for sufficient signal-to-noise ratio. In this joint Euro-American effort, we are developing a passive ~0.3 THz - 1 THz camera demonstrator capable of sub-Kelvin thermal resolution at video frame rates. The cryogen-free system utilizes a linear array of cryogenic antenna-coupled vacuum-bridge microbolometers, coupled to innovative all-reflective conical scanning optics and room temperature read-out electronics. First imaging results from the video rate system will be presented.