ED URE S U AT C FO E FE SU S I

ue to the enormous advances made in semiconductor technology over the last few years, high integration densities with moderate costs are achievable even in the millimeter-wave (mm-wave) range and beyond, which encourage the

development of imaging systems with a high number of channels. The mm-wave range lies between 30 and 300 GHz, with corresponding wavelengths between 10 and 1 mm. While imaging objects with signals of a few millimeters in wavelength, many optically opaque objects appear transparent, making mm-wave

Sherif Sayed Ahmed (sherif-sayed.ahmed@rohde-schwarz.com), Andreas Schiessl, and Frank Gumbmann are with Rohde & Schwarz GmbH & Co. KG, Munich, Germany. Marc Tiebout is with Infineon Technologies, Villach, Austria. Sebastian Methfessel and Lorenz-Peter Schmidt are with the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MMM.2012.2205772 Date of publication: 13 September 2012

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Sherif Sayed Ahmed, Andreas Schiessl, Frank Gumbmann, Marc Tiebout, Sebastian Methfessel, and Lorenz-Peter Schmidt

imaging attractive for a wide variety of commercial and scientific applications like nondestructive testing (NDT), material characterization, security scanning, and medical screening. The spatial resolution in lateral and range directions as well as the image dynamic range offered by an imaging system are considered the main measures of performance. With the availability of more channels combined with the powerful digital signal processing (DSP) capabilities of modern computers, the performance of mm-wave imaging systems is advancing rapidly. The most commonly known imaging systems are based on X-ray technology, which are applied in, e.g., computed tomography (CT) for medical diagnostics [1], NDT applications [2], and luggage inspection at security checkpoints. These systems work in a transmission setup. Furthermore, backscatter X-ray systems, which work in a reflection setup, were investigated over the last years, especially for the screening of passengers for concealed objects at airports [3]. On the one hand, X-ray images have an inherent high lateral resolution due to the extremely short wavelength (m ~ 10 2nm 10nm). But on the other hand, the energy of the photons is high enough to ionize organic and inorganic matter. Therefore, health aspects are critical with respect to imaging of humans, especially in the case of personnel screening at airports. Another well-known imaging technology is the ultrasonic inspection of materials for NDT applications [4] and screening of humans for medical diagnostics [5]. Depending on the medium of propagation, a lateral resolution even in the submillimeter region is achievable. However, for most ultrasonic devices, an appropriate coupling medium is required for an efficient coupling of the ultrasonic wave in the respective device under test (DUT). In contrast, electromagnetic mm-waves offer a contactless inspection of materials with nonionizing radiation and a high spatial resolution. Since spatial resolution and penetration depth are conflicting parameters regarding the wavelength, e.g., the E-band (6090 GHz with m = 5 to 3.3 mm) is a good compromise for NDT applications to detect flaws, material inhomogeneities, and inclusions in dielectrics. A lateral resolution of ~2 mm is sufficient for many applications, e.g., the personnel screening at airport security

checkpoints. Furthermore, it is possible to exploit the vectorial nature of electromagnetic waves and to carry out polarimetric measurements [6]. This offers the potential of classification of different scattering processes [7] and thus an improved detection of anomalies in the DUT is possible. The mm-wave images can be generated by either a passive or an active imaging approach. Passive imaging systems detect the characteristic radiation of an object and the reflected background radiation without the need of illuminating the DUT with additional electromagnetic energy. Thus a passive mm-wave image contains the information of the emissivity and reflectivity of an object in the respective frequency domain [8], [9]. Especially for outdoor applications, this technique offers a high radiometric contrast with respect to the emissivity of the imaged object due to the low background radiation temperature (Tsky) of the sky, i.e., in mm-wave range the clear sky has Tsky 1 100 K. However, passive imaging systems suffer from low radiometric contrast in indoor applications due to the high background temperature of the environment. This can be solved by applying cooled detectors to achieve a high radiometric sensitivity [10] or by using a noise source as an illuminator [11]. Another drawback is the lack of depth information concerning the investigated DUT. This results from the fact that the detected signals can be understood as thermal noise and thus the radiation is incoherent. On the contrary, active imaging systems illuminate the DUT and the reflected or transmitted field can be detected coherently or incoherently. For many applications, active imaging is necessary to achieve an image with high dynamic range and radiometric contrast. Regarding a transmission setup, the attenuation and absorption through a dielectric specimen can be mapped, while for a reflection setup, the object reflectivity can be characterized. In the case of spatially smooth objects relative to the applied wavelength, the scattering process is dominated by specular reflections [12]. Therefore, the visibility of the DUT and the image quality depends on an appropriate illumination of the specimen and a proper positioning of the antennas. By applying a coherent broadband transmit and receive signal or, equivalently, a time delay measurement

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With the availability of more channels combined with the DSP capabilities of modern computers, the performance of mm-wave imaging systems is advancing rapidly.
in active imaging, it is additionally possible to reconstruct the spatial extend of the DUT along the range direction. With a sufficiently large signal bandwidth, it is furthermore possible to analyze multiple reflections resulting from a stratified dielectric medium. This information can be used for instance to investigate delamination for NDT applications [13] or to identify explosive sheets or other concealed objects for personnel screening applications [14], [15]. The last named application requires a reflection setup since the human body is not transparent in the mm-wave region with the penetration depth of human skin in the range of submillimeters. Due to the high water content of the human skin, it behaves as a strong reflector for mm-wave signals. Thus, the reflection imagery is dominated by the specular reflections, making active imaging on large distance inappropriate. Therefore, close-range imaging is necessary, which consequently increases the complexity regarding the image formation with respect to the conventional imaging under far-field conditions.

Image Formation
For many NDT applications and especially for personnel screening, a reflection setup is necessary. To accomplish a three-dimensional (3-D) reconstruction of the DUT, a two-dimensional (2-D) aperture has to be sampled with a broadband measurement signal at each selected transmit-receive combination. The spatial extension of the aperture determines the lateral resolution dx,y, given approximately by d x, y . m L , D x, y (1)

where Dx,y denotes the length of the aperture in the corresponding direction, m the wavelength, and L the distance between object and aperture [16], [17]. The resolution dz in range direction is determined approximately by the signal bandwidth B of the measured RF signal [16], [17], thus given by dz . c0 . 2B (2)

Accordingly, a large signal bandwidth B results in an equivalent short pulse duration and hence in a high range resolution. This is for example interesting for monitoring delamination effects in NDT or the detection of thin dielectric explosive sheets in person-

nel screening. In practice, the bandwidth is often limited by the employed semiconductor components, e.g., oscillators, mixers, and amplifiers. Depending on the field of application, the spatial sampling can be realized with mechanical scanning techniques [18][20] or electronic sampling by switching between spatially distributed transmit and receive antennas [21][23]. If real-time imaging is required, electronic sampling with parallelized data acquisition is necessary, which leads consequently to a higher hardware complexity. A compromise between measurement speed and technical complexity is a hybrid concept with mechanical sampling in one spatial coordinate and electronic sampling in the perpendicular direction [24][26]. This is an appropriate approach to inspect goods on a conveyor belt and offers also a flexible choice of the imaging aperture (planar, cylindrical, etc.) with respect to the mechanical sampling coordinate. Thus, an adaption of the imaging aperture to the target geometry is possible, which results in an improved target illumination [12]. High lateral resolution results from a large aperture dimension D as denoted in (1). This can be accomplished by hardware focusing with elliptic mirrors, dielectric lenses, reflect arrays or antenna arrays with hardware beamforming (HBF). No necessary image formation has to be applied when the mm-wave image is generated by focusing with mirrors and lenses. However, these devices offer optimum resolution only at the focal point [27]. Reflect arrays are planar devices with a spatial distribution of adjustable reflective elements, which can be either continuous or binary modulated components [28]. If the spatial reflectivity over the reflector can be electrically tuned, it is also possible to steer the resulting focal point in three dimensions [21]. This approach is, however, limited by the low bandwidth of the reflective elements of the reflect array, which results in a poor range resolution. An image with high dynamic range requires furthermore a dense placement of these reflective elements which is hardly achievable for large reflect arrays in the mmwave range. Another approach that enables a flexible steering of the focal point is by individual control of the transmit and receive antennas in the imaging array. The idea is to weight the respective antenna elements by a proper phase and magnitude factors to steer the electromagnetic wave in the desired direction. This can be accomplished either with hardware- or digital-beamforming (DBF), as illustrated in Figures 1 and 2, respectively. HBF, however needs no post processing to focus the image, requires essentially an exact knowledge about the transfer functions of all transmit and receive antennas, which have to be compensated by the respective phase shifter and gain control. This requirement is also hardly achievable for large imaging arrays and hence practically limits the system performance.

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The most flexible approach is the DBF which is also well known as aperture synthesis. The reflected signal is coherently detected at every receive antenna, digitized and stored. After compensating for the influence of the transmit/receive transfer functions by a proper calibration procedure, the data are weighted by complex correction factors, in order to exclude the free space transfer function, and coherently sum the recorded reflections to form the focused radar image. In literature, this numerical procedure is named variously as DBF, aperture synthesis, back-propagation, back-projection or migration technique [29][31]. In contrast to HBF, several mm-wave images can be generated with the same raw data set. This is interesting when different amplitude weighting is applied to the raw data in order to generate images of different features addressing, e.g., optimum spatial resolution or enhanced image dynamic range. This high level of flexibility made by the DBF comes at the cost of the intensive signal processing involved, which therefore often forms the bottleneck of the system performance. The image frame rate achieved by a mm-wave imaging system is as well a considerable performance criterion for many applications. It is determined by both, the measurement and the image formation speed, which strongly depends on system topology. In HBF systems, measurement time is proportional to the number of scanned voxels and the measurement time per voxel, which is connected to the intermediate frequency (IF) bandwidth and the switching speed of the system. In DBF systems with parallel acquisition at the receivers, measurement time is determined by the number of sequential transmitter measurements, the RF bandwidth, the required unambiguous range, the transmitter switching speed, and IF bandwidth. With mechanically scanning systems, measurement time will be also limited by the achievable scan speed while taking the required accuracy of the antenna positioning into account. The achievable image formation speed in a DBF system depends mainly on the resolution of the image, the number of collected measurements, and the complexity of the underlying image formation algorithm. DSP units thus govern the speed of image formation, whereas they are continuously offering higher clocks and more parallelization on their processing cores making DBF solutions more applicable. The sampling of the 2-D aperture can be accomplished by a monostatic or a multistatic arrangement of the transmit and receive antennas. In a monostatic setup, each antenna element in the imaging aperture transmit and receive at the same position. The DUT is sequentially illuminated from every antenna element. The benefit of this approach is that only one transmit/ receive channel is required if the aperture is sampled mechanically (see Figure 3). Electronic switching between a higher number of transmit/receive elements

Electromagnetic mm-waves offer a contactless inspection of materials with nonionizing radiation and a high spatial resolution.

Antenna Array Phase Shifter Variable Gain

Power Combiner

Digitalization

A /D

Figure 1. Hardware architecture of receive path for hardware-beamforming imagers.

Antenna Array Fixed Gain Digitalization A /D A /D A /D Memory A /D

Image Formation

Digital Signal Processing

Figure 2. Hardware architecture of receive path for DBF imagers.

Transmit/Receive Antenna

y rA z r x DUT

Figure 3. Geometry definition for monostatic imaging. The green lines show an example path for mechanical scanning.

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A multistatic arrangement samples the aperture by spatially distributed multiple transmit and receive antennas.
is possible to improve the data acquisition speed, however this leads to an enormous number of channels. If the compensation of the free space attenuation is neglected, the focusing in a monostatic arrangement can be formulated as o (y r) = / / s ( v rA , ~) e j2 c0 R,
~ N~ N A

made by an equivalent monostatic array. In addition, a multistatic approach offers the opportunity of a strong parallelization of the data acquisition, on contrary to a monostatic setup. This is beneficial for real-time imaging applications. An efficient illumination is realized by a proper positioning of the transmit and receive antennas. With a multistatic array arrangement, the reconstruction formula becomes o (y r) = / / / s ( v rT, v rR, ~) e j c0 (R T + R R),
~ N~ NT NR

(4)

(3)

where s (v rA , ~) denotes the received complex signal at v location rA and angular frequency ~ , and o (v r) is the desired reflectivity distribution of the DUT. R = ; v rA - v r; v is the distance between the position rA of the respective antenna element and the position v r of the desired voxel position. For DBF, there exist several concepts for an efficient numerical implementation of the above formula. The most popular approach is the reconstruction in the Fourier domain [32][34], which benefits from the fast Fourier transformation (FFT). There are also concepts for multilevel based reconstructions [35], [36], which were adapted from the field of numerical electromagnetics [37]. A multistatic arrangement samples the aperture by spatially distributed multiple transmit and receive antennas [22], [23], [25], [26]. The DUT is again sequentially illuminated by the transmit antennas however the reflected electromagnetic field is coherently detected by every receive antenna. Accordingly, the total number of channels can be drastically reduced, while collecting the same number of measurements

Transmit Antenna Receive Antenna

rR

rT

z r x DUT

Figure 4. Geometry definition for multistatic imaging. The distribution of the transmit and receive antennas are selected differently.

where R T = ; v rT - v r ; and R R = ; v rR - v r ; are the distances between the transmit antennas, and the receive antennas relative to the position of the desired voxel, respectively. For multistatic imaging, the data can be focused with fast reconstruction methods in Fourier domain [38], [39] or by multilevel concepts in space domain [35]. Space domain reconstruction is numerically expensive, however does not suffer from any image degradation due to interpolation errors in Fourier domain. If the DUT is in the far-field of the array, the reconstruction formulas (3) and (4) can be simplified by assuming propagating plane waves. This leads to reconstruction formulas which can be directly implemented based on FFTs. For the applications of NDT and personnel screening, the distance between the imaged object and the imager is nearly equal to the array dimensions. Therefore, the object is located in the near field of the array and the far-field approximation does not apply. Consequently, the transmitted and reflected signals have to be treated as spherical waves. To generate a mm-wave image without ambiguities, a dense array with an element spacing of half the minimum wavelength, concerning the transmit/receive signals, should be realized. In multistatic imaging, however, the dense array arrangement has to be realized with either the transmit or the receive antennas for each lateral direction. Therefore thinning of the imaging array is possible without producing ambiguities. A possible technique for thinning is the use of a randomly populated array (see Figure 4) or aperiodic element spacing [40]. These concepts are well known from aperture synthesis in radio astronomy [41], but they suffer from an increased sidelobe level which results in a loss of dynamic range in the resultant mmwave image. For multistatic imaging, the approach of an effective aperture [42][44] can be used to form a sparse periodic array (SPA) design. This approach is valid under far field conditions, where the resulting effective array factor AE (u, v) of the multistatic array is equal to the multiplication of the transmit array factor AT (u, v) with the receive array factor AR (u, v), where u and v describe the direction cosines with respect to the array. As the array factor is mathematically equal to the Fourier transformation of the aperture, this leads

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0.25

0.15

0.05
y (m)

0 0.05

Thin film ceramic modules, LTCC modules, and enhanced IC packages integrating antennas on their signal redistribution layers are all possible options for medium-channel-count systems.
0 dB 80

0.15 40 0 0.05 x (m) 0.15 0.25 y (mm) 0 40

0.25 0.25 0.15 0.05

20

40

Figure 5. Array geometry (red for Tx antenna lines, blue for Rx ones) [22]. to an effective aperture aE (x, y) of the multistatic array which results from the 2-D convolution between the transmit and receive aperture distributions aT (x, y) and aR (x, y), respectively. Their mathematical dependences are described in (5) and (6). A E (u, v) = A T (u, v) $ A R (u, v) a E (x, y) = a T (x, y) ) ) a R (x, y) (5) (6)

80 80 40 0 x (mm) 40 80 60

Figure 7. Point spread function of the Tx array [22]. can be considerably reduced by introducing redundant antenna elements [44] or by modifying the array arrangement [25], [45]. Following the SPA design concept, a novel array architecture was introduced in [22], which is capable of compensating for the drawbacks of the near field operation. Figure 5 illustrates the array geometry, and Figure 6 shows the associated allocation of the effective aperture. The system operates from 72 to 80 GHz and covers an aperture of 50 cm times 50 cm, populated with 16 antenna clusters. The total number of antennas is 736 transmit and 736 receive antennas. Fig ures 7 and 8 show the point spread function (PSF) of the focused beam for the transmitter (Tx) and receiver (Rx) apertures, respectively. In spite of the strong ambiguities seen, the overall transmit-receive PSF shown in Figure 9 is free of any ambiguities. The background

The main advantage of a SPA design is the reduction of the total number of antenna elements with respect to conventional dense arrays. This is achieved by keeping a well sampled effective aperture, whereas the physical apertures can be very sparse. As the target distance L is similar to array dimensions, the target is in the array near field, which produces residual ambiguities in the resulting mm-wave image. This effect

0.5 0.3 0.1 y (m) 0 0.1 0.3 0.5 0.5 0.3 0.1

16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 x (m) 0.1 0.3 0.5

0 dB 80 40 y (mm) 0 40 80 80 40 0 x (mm) 40 80 60 40 20

Figure 6. Effective aperture of the multistatic array shown in Figure 5.

Figure 8. Point spread function of the Rx array [22].

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If the design of monolithic integrated front ends can be afforded, RF PCBs with chip-on-board technology, which allow also for integration of multilayer planar antennas, are suitable for frequencies up to 100 GHz.
level is below -60 dB, which is essential for generating images of high dynamic range after focusing. The lateral resolution is of 2 mm in both directions. Figure10 shows an image result of this system demonstrating the high image quality produced.

Technology Choices
The technology choices mainly depend on the chosen frequency bands (ranging from a few gigahertz to several hundred gigahertz) and the number of channels (ranging from a few ones to several thousands) present in the system. Analog/RF front-end modules can be

80 40 y (mm)

0 dB

20 0 40 80 60 80 40 0 40 x (mm) (a) 80 40

2 mm 15 mm

2 mm

(b)

Figure 9. (a) Overall transmit-receive PSF [22] and (b) 3-D rendering of the PSF, showing the resolution cell size and the surrounding sidelobes [22].

built as waveguide modules, as microwave integrated modules based on thin film ceramic technology, as low-temperature cofired ceramic (LTCC) modules or as an RF printed circuit board (PCB). Cost per channel is decreasing in this list. For low-channel-count systems, the designer can rely on proven commercially available modules, mostly available as connectorized microwave integrated circuits or waveguide modules at higher frequencies. With increasing channel count, the space consumed by the front ends becomes critical, and higher integration is necessary. This is best achieved by developing dedicated multichannel Tx and Rx front-end modules. In high-channel-count systems, mature manufacturing processes that are suitable for mass production with good reproducibility are vital for achieving reliable results. At high frequencies, interface losses are not negligible and the RF frequency generation have to move near to or into the analog front end, as well as the front end has to be placed as near as possible to the antennas to minimize interface losses. For low-channel-count systems, low loss but space-consuming interconnect technologies, e.g., waveguides, can be used. High-channelcount systems at high frequencies must integrate the antenna into multichannel analog front-end modules. Thin film ceramic modules, LTCC modules, and enhanced IC packages integrating antennas on their signal redistribution layers are all possible options for medium-channel-count systems or as submount modules in high-channel-count systems. If the design of monolithic integrated front ends can be afforded, RF PCBs with chip-on-board technology, which allow also for integration of multilayer planar antennas, are suitable for frequencies up to 100 GHz. High-channelcount systems at frequencies higher than 100 GHz have not yet been realized. Such systems require even higher integration levels of multichannel monolithic microwave integrated circuits (MMICs), possibly with included on-chip antennas. The choice of semiconductor technology for mmwave imaging will be a never ending discussion depending on the addressed system parameters and the availability of manufacturing facilities. Since the availability of deep-submicron CMOS technologies with transit frequencies exceeding 200 GHz [46], three main technology options exist to realize mm-wave integrated circuits: 1) III-V technologies, 2) SiGe bipolar (or BiCMOS), or 3) CMOS. All the three technology classes, including III-V due to its large utilization in mobile phones, are mature and can be used for production with good reproducibility. Regarding the RF performance, e.g., noise, output power and thermal stability, III-V technologies still clearly outperform silicon based technologies and should be the preferred option for imaging systems with low number of channels, i.e., mechanically scanning ones. Integration density capability of III-V technologies is obviously lower

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than SiGe bipolar or CMOS, but should be high enough for first generation imag10 mm ing systems. On a long term perspective, CMOS offers the 2.5 mm best capability of integrating RF front ends, analog circuits, baseband processing, analog-to-digital converters (ADCs), digital-to-analog converters (DACs), and DSP units, all on one die. Integration of CMOS RF modules is still, however, subject to the challenges of solving design difficulties to meet the required performance at high frequency and high bandwidth, and to solve reliabil14 mm ity problems caused by hot carrier degradation. Last but (a) (b) not least, technology choice will be determined by cost, especially for large imaging Figure 10. Illustration of the imaging capability of the multistatic system using a U.S. systems. With respect to the Air Force (USAF) test chart made of a metal sheet and mounted in front of a bed of nails with absorber in their background. The nails are fixed to a grid of 10 mm distance. Each total expected product volnail is of 5-mm diameter with an approximate radar cross-section of 50 dBsm. Due to ume, not only wafer producthe high dynamic range of the image and the low sidelobe levels of the system, they are all tion costs must be taken into clearly visible. The slots of the USAF chart are separable down to the 2 mm openings [22]. account but also development on the approximation of spherical phase fronts and costs and the cost for a production mask set. For 65 nm hence any deviation from this assumption within the and 40 nm CMOS technology, the cost of the producfield of view will cause image degradation. Therefore, tion mask set is excessively high, which makes CMOS phase centers should be stable over the beamwidth as not yet a feasible option. From todays point of view, a well as the bandwidth used, a criterion which is difpure bipolar process, which is already in use for mass ficult to achieve with many types of antennas. Addimarket 77-GHz automotive radar applications [47], tionally, polarization purity becomes an issue when [48], gives the best cost effectiveness: mask set cost is polarimetric imaging is demanded. Typical antenna a fraction (less than a tenth) of a 40 nm CMOS mask types used in imaging systems include for instance set, production cost is clearly lower than for the III-V slotline, patch, waveguide, horn, and dipole antennas. technologies, and a large design reuse from existing Tests with cavity backed circularly polarized spiral automotive radar modules reduces development costs antennas carried out in [49] showed positive aspects and guarantees a short time-to-market. Next higher of polarimetric imaging. In [50], a promising design integration levels are possible by using SiGe BiCMOS based on differential stripline feeds for realizing a technology, which includes a nowadays relatively polarimetric imaging system was introduced. Last but cheap 130 nm CMOS technology in order to integrate not least, antennas are required to be small in size . On more digital and analog modules together. one hand, the size of the antenna structure must allow The choice of the used antenna is of central imporfor dense sampling of the wavefront at less than the tance for any imaging system. Transmit and receive wavelength, and on the other hand miniature antenna antennas must couple the electromagnetic wave to the design offers a feasible integration with MMICs for medium of propagation while following certain design successful array integration. requirements to ensure proper operation. Furthermore, image quality is highly influenced by the used signal bandwidth which consequently must be supported QPASS System by the antennas. Antennas are often required to offer The Quick Personnel Safe Screening system (QPASS) high beamwidths as well as very stable phase centers. was developed on the basis of multistatic DBF technolThe phase center describes a virtual point for a sphere ogy to target the application of close-range personnel center where the phase front can be approximated to screening at airports and critical infrastructure buildbe radiated from. The image formation algorithms rely ings [51]. The imaging array operates from 70 to 80GHz

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The choice of the used antenna is of central importance for any imaging system.

Cluster

47 Rx Antennas 94 Tx Antennas 2m 47 Rx Antennas

A basic unit, namely a cluster, integrates 96 Tx and 96 Rx channels in one housing, which is suited for flexibly building imaging arrays of different geometries and sizes. A dedicated digital back end unit, including parallel analog to digital conversion and image reconstruction kernels, has been developed. Four of these units are integrated on a single PCB called an IF-board in order to serve four clusters simultaneously. Four clusters, an IF-Board, a signal distribution board, power supply, mechanics, and cooling parts form together one unit. Four of these units are again connected to a central board to form a complete array. Then two of the arrays are connected to an industrial PC (IPC) via fast PCI Express connection, resulting in the complete imaging system. The volume in front of the system is illuminated sequentially by each of the Tx channels, and the complex reflected signals are simultaneously and coherently sampled by all Rx channels. These sampled data are then processed, reflections are calculated, system error correction is applied and the image is then reconstructed. The system block diagram of a single array is shown in Figure 12.

1m

Signal Source
Figure 11. Photograph of QPASS system (without cover) [55]. On the right, a cluster unit is shown [55]. with frequency-stepped continuous-wave technique. The array design follows the same architecture as the one in Figure 5, however extends to cover a two meters times one meter aperture, as shown in Figure11. Two arrays of square aperture are stacked vertically, where each includes 1536 Tx channels and 1536 Rx channels, making a total of 6144 RF channels. This ensures proper illumination of the human body [52]. Although being developed for a specific application, the system architecture features a highly modular design offering a flexible platform to address further applications [53], [54]. Digital-beamforming relies on accurate phase measurement for each Tx-Rx combination. Therefore, heterodyne reception is favorable, which hence requires generation of coherent RF and local oscillator (LO) signals. A dedicated synthesizer unit has been developed and optimized to generate the RF and LO signals around 20 GHz in order to ease signal distribution to all RF front ends. Direct digital synthesizers (DDSs) are used to generate the signals, which are derived from a highly stable oven-controlled crystal oscillator (OCXO). DDSs are preferred here due to their ability to switch frequencies very fast. Contrarily to free-running oscillators, the DDSs can generate signals with a determined phase value, which is useful in many imaging applications. After the DDSs, the frequency is multiplied by a factor of 256, and distributed to the clusters.

Signal Sources

Distribution Network

Single Array Front End 1536 IF Signals

Acquisition Hardware A D

Image Processing and Visualization

fRF/4 DSP Front-end Control (fRFfIF)/4 Synthesizer Control Control Unit Multicore Computer

Figure 12. System block diagram of a single array.

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On each chip, the RF and LO signals are amplified, quadrupled and distributed to four channels.

RF Front End
Each cluster contains 96 Tx and 96 Rx channels, where four of them are used as internal reference channels. The analog front ends are built of custommade four-channel receiver and transmitter chips, which are connected to aperture-coupled patchexcited horn antennas. Those elements are embedded in a RF multilayer PCB. The chips are mounted in multilevel cavities, as the antennas differential feed lines run on an inner layer of the PCB, and for RF performance reasons, vias and longer bond wires have been avoided, as shown in Figure 13. The horn part of the antennas is integrated into the cluster

QPASS was developed on the basis of multistatic DBF technology to target the application of close-range personnel screening at airports and critical infrastructure buildings.
housing, which also carries two RF and two LO input ports. A custom chipset has been designed for this system [56]. Both transmit (Figure 14) and receive (Figure 15) MMICs include four E-band channels and a central RF or LO distribution with frequency quadrupling. The center frequency of operation is 75 GHz

Fastening Screw

Horn Antenna

Cover

Patch

Absorbing Material

Tx or Rx Chip RF Part

Cavity

Bond Wire

Heat Sink IF Part

Slot

Differential Line

Thermal Vias

Via

Figure 13. Cut view of the multilayer PCB illustrating the integration of MMIC and the antenna structure inside the housing of the cluster.

Temp Sensor

MUX

Analog Bus

RF Ch. 1

RF Ch. 2 RF RF Ch. 3 Buf Follower RF Ch. 4 Buf Enable Quadrupler PA Gain On/Off

Figure 14. Block diagram of the four channels Tx SiGe Chip.

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RF Ch. 1 RF Ch. 2 LO Buf Follower Temp Sensor Buf RF Ch. 3

RF Ch. 4 Buf LNA

IF 1 IF 2 IF 3 IF 4 Analog Bus

Figure 15. Block diagram of the four channels Rx SiGe chip [55].

with a bandwidth of approximately 10 GHz. Figures 16 and 17 show photos of the Tx and Rx SiGe chips, respectively. The measured receiver conversion gain is 23 dB with a SSB NF below 10 dB over a wide frequency range from 70 to 82 GHz. The transmitter chip includes 4 output channels with an output power of more than 0dBm in a frequency range from 70 GHz to 86 GHz. Both chips are supplied from a single 3.3 V supply voltage and the power consumption per channel is 145mW for Tx and 180 mW for Rx. The process used for this chipset is a very cost-effective pure SiGe:C bipolar technology similar to the one described in [57]. It is based on a double-polysilicon self-aligned transis-

tor concept with shallow and deep trench isolation. An example transistor is shown in Figure 18. The SiGe:C base is deposited by selective epitaxy. A mono-crystalline emitter contact results in a small emitter resistance. Different npn transistor types with cut-off frequencies from 52 GHz to more than 200 GHz and collectoremitter breakdown voltages at open base (BVCEO) from 5 V to 1.8 V are available. In addition to npn and pnp transistors, the process provides polysilicon resistors with sheet resistances of 150 and 1,000 X/sq and tantalium-nitride (TaN) thin film resistors with a sheet resistance of 20 X/sq. A metalinsulatormetal (MIM) capacitor with Al2O3 dielectric and a specific capacitance of 1.4fF/nm2 is integrated in a four-layer copper

Figure 16. Photograph of the Tx chip with the integrated four RF channels (size 2.2 # 2 mm2) [56].

Figure 17. Photograph of Rx chip with the integrated four RF channels (size 2.2#2 mm2) [56].

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metallization. The use of an automotive-qualified bipolar process was furthermore very advantageous due to the reuse of 77-GHz mass market automotive radar designs [58], [59], which enabled meeting design targets after just two design iterations.

The radiated peak power is approximately one milliwatt, which is very low compared to communication devices.
MMIC frontends in a 2-D array with high element count. They offer a small footprint and a high bandwidth by using a differentially fed dipole, resonant

Antenna
The planar antennas used in the system are optimized to fulfill the requirements of the imaging application, together with the capability of integration with the

Base

Emitter

Collector

n+ Poly-Si

p+ -Poly

SiC

p MonoSiGe: C (Base) Buried Layer

STI (Shallow Trench Iso)

p -Isolation

DT (Deep Trench Isolation)

p -Substrate

(a)

Collector

Emitter

Base

Shallow Trench SiGe:C Base Deep Trench (b)

Figure 18. Transmission electron microscopy image and a schematic of a cross section for a npn SiGe transistor [48], [56]. (Printed with permission from Infineon Technologies AG, Munich, Germany.)

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Differential Line Control and IF Signals

Miled First Cavity

Patch Antenna

20-GHz Input Supply

Chip Mounted into Miled Second Cavity Ground Contacts

Polarization was purposely rotated by 45 in order to reuse the same antenna on vertical as well as horizontal antenna lines while keeping copolarized operation. The internal layers of the PCB used to realize the antenna are illustrated in Figure 13. Figures 19 and 20 show photos of the integrated chip and the patch part of the antenna. The simulation results of the antenna at 75 GHz for both the copolarized and the cross-polarized components are shown in Figure 21. The antenna has a wide beam with approximately 8 dB gain and delivers high polarization purity. The radiated peak power is approximately one milliwatt, which is very low compared to communication devices, e.g., mobile phones.

Figure 19. Chip integration in a multilayer PCB including the patch part of antennas shown on the right side [62].

Digital Back End

The digital back end performs measurement acquisition, system control and monitoring, digitization of IF signals, system error correction, and image reconaperture slots, and a patch element. Input matching and struction. The IF signals are amplified and then digibeamshape are improved by a stacked cylindrical horn, tized by an eight-channel ADC chip at 50 MSa/s, as which also enhances isolation to neighboring elements shown on the left of Figure 22. The signals are further together with a via-ring cavity in the substrate [60], [61]. down-converted digitally to zero IF and subsequently filThree-Way Cavity tered. Conversion and DSP Wilkinson Thin-Film Divider are performed in parallel, Resistors the system implements 2 x 1536 coherent digital receiver Two-Way Wilkinson Divider chains, which is necessary to achieve the short measurement time. For each single measurement, twelve samples are required to account for the channel and filter set3 mm tling times [55]. The collected reflection data are compared to reference channels built Figure 20. Photograph of the cluster without housing showing the signal distribution, inside the system in order to chip integration, and the patch part of the antennas [61], [62].

Phi

Phi

dB 8 6 4 2 0

Theta z z

Theta The Th T he h eta

8 16 24 32

(a)

(b)

Figure 21. Simulation of the radiation pattern of a single antenna showing the polarization purity and the beam quality. On the left, the copolarized component of the field is shown, and on the right the cross-polarized component.

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IF Signals

HSSI

HSSI

PCI Express
. . .

Calculate Reflections Reconstruction Kernels

DDC95

IF Signals

ADC95 Memory Controller Cache AGU Cache

32 High-SpeedInterfaces at 36 Gb/s 1.15 Tb/s AGU

32 High-SpeedInterfaces at 10.9 Gb/s 349 Gb/s Memory Controller Legend

2 PCIe at 32 Gb/s 64 Gb/s

e j

3072 ADCs at 50 MHz 138 GS/s 32x

ADC Analog-Digital-Converter DDC Digital Down-Converter 32x HSSI High-Speed Serial Interface AGU Address-Generating-Unit

DDR3 1 GB

DDR3 1 GB

IPC

Industrial-PC

1536 Reconstruction Kernels 10.6 TOPS/s

Figure 22. Block diagram of the digital back end used in the QPASS system.

Touchpanel
IPC

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DDR3 1 GB DDR3 1 GB 32x Cache 48x AGU Cache AGU Reconstruction Memory Controller 4x Memory Controller 2x Data Collection

32x

32x

Data Acquisition DDC0

ADC0

e j DDC1

ADC1

e j

. . .

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Active imaging ensures image production with a high dynamic range, which is required by many applications where objects are to be found behind surfaces or inside volumes.
compensate for any thermal drifts and thus ensuring high stability over long time of operation. Then the image reconstruction takes place at each cluster unit in a parallelized fashion, in order to minimize the transferred data rates inside the system. The digital back end offers a fast PCI Express connection to the integrated IPC, which is used to transfer the reconstructed 3-D images in magnitude and phase. The images can then be prepared for direct display or used for further image processing steps beforehand. A cutting-edge realization of the digital back end has been designed to deal with the huge data rates of 1.15 Tb/s collected by the system. The reconstruction hardware needs to perform 10.6 Tera-operations-persecond in order to deliver full image reconstruction in approximately two seconds. Figure 22 illustrates the signal flow within the digital back end and reveals part of its inherent complexity.

0.8 0.6 0.4 0.2 0 y (m) 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 0.5 0 x (m) (a) 0.5

The QPASS system is capable to produce 3-D images of 30 dB dynamic range and 2 mm of lateral resolution. Figure 23 illustrates an example image of a person concealing two dielectric objects, which demonstrates the system capability to address personnel screening applications. In Figure 24, another image using colors is presented to demonstrate the 3-D content of the image. The color codes the range information of each voxel, where red is close and blue is far relative to the imager surface. Figure 25 illustrates a detailed view of the pistol, and demonstrates the high system resolution, allowing to image features of a few millimeters in size. In the application of personnel screening, privacy issues can arise. Therefore, the 3-D images are further processed with dedicated detection algorithms in order to automatically and anonymously find concealed objects of any potential hazards such as weapons or explosives. Moreover, the system is also capable to detect depth variations down to 50 um [51], thanks to its exceptional signal phase stability. This corresponds to a phase measurement accuracy of 5 in the reconstructed image. Such a feature is attractive to many applications addressing accurate 3-D modeling of surfaces, which stands as a competitive solution to optical scanners. With the flexible and modular design concept for both the RF front ends as well as the digital backend, t he system ca n be reconfigured to adapt different imaging modes and can be geometrically modified to cover various aperture dimensions. The high image dynamic range ensures images of 30 dB free of any artifacts, which also open the possibility for image processing techniques, including super-resolution algorithms, to enhance the imaging capability of the system specifically for certain applications. Many algorithms for object detection and classification are being either adapted or newly developed to deal with the rich 3-D image information delivered by the system in magnitude and phase.

Conclusion and Outlook

(b)

Figure 23. Image of a person taken from 70 to 80 GHz [55]. Image shows the magnitude information after being projected along range direction. Two concealed dielectric objects, liquid bag (up) and explosive simulant (down), are marked with red rectangles.

Microwave imaging systems are exhibiting a continuous improvement in their performance combined with a remarkable increase in their

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complexity and level of integration. The advances in The reconstruction hardware needs semiconductor technology assist this development to perform 10.6 Tera-operationson one side, and the increase in the computational power of modern computers and DSP units supper-second in order to deliver ports the DBF techniques on the other side. Imagfull image reconstruction in ing systems based on reflectors, mirrors, lenses, or approximately two seconds. complex phased-array components are becoming less attractive for many applications. Instead, software derived technologies are coming to the frontier of the state-of-the-art solutions. These technologies allow for an optimal image focusing at all range distances and are not restricted to focal lengths. The applicability of these techniques are moving to cover the mm-wave range, and are even pushed to reach the terahertz band. Active imaging ensures image production with a high dynamic range, which is required by many applications where objects are to be found behind surfaces or inside volumes. Multistatic array architectures for industrial and security applications have been intensively investigated during the last years. Multistatic imaging allows for a huge reduction factor in the total number of needed channels, and hence opens the opportunity for fully electronic solutions to be realized. Many of the numerical complications caused by multistatic imaging are nowadays affordable due to the available computational capabilities. As integration levels are getting higher, modular concepts with combined analog and digital units are becoming reachable. Power consumption of the involved devices is much reduced, thus allowing for compact modular designs. Semiconductor technologies are offering various options for system realization depending on cost and performance. In addition, PCB manufacturing has been significantly enhanced to be a cost-efficient carrier to MMICs and antennas aside of each other. Frequency ranges up to 100 GHz Figure 24. Image of a person concealing a P99 pistol on the back. The reflectivity image is here multiplied by the are currently realizable using these technologies, and colored range information to visualize the 3-D content of higher frequencies can be supported with submount the image. The range changes from red to blue as close to far techniques. from the imager, respectively. The first steps towards a fully electronic solution based on multistatic systems and DBF technique have been made and proved to be efficient and affordable. This is best demonstrated by the QPASS system, which integrates around 6,000 coherent RF channels realized on SiGe technology and included aswell an integrated image reconstruction unit. Challenges are still there to build even more advanced imaging systems featuring full polarimetric imaging, faster image reconstruction units, and combined reflection-transmission (a) (b) imaging. Polarimetric multistatic imaging will increase the detection capabilities Figure 25. Photograph and mm-wave image of P99 pistol concealed by using methods based on ellipsometry behind a thick pullover and a leather belt. Metal features inside the plastic grip, e.g., the magazine, are clearly visible. known from optics.

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In the near future, new imaging facilities based on modern mm-wave technologies will bring new opportunities to the humankind to take advantage of simple hand-held up to professional large scale imagers.
In the near future, new imaging facilities based on modern mm-wave technologies will bring new opportunities to the humankind to take advantage of simple hand-held up to professional large scale imagers, serving their demands especially where x-ray or ultrasonic methods are not feasible. New applications assisted by tailored algorithms for image processing, classification, and interpretation will come up one after another. And at the same time, the system prices will drop following the progress in semiconductor market. This can make such systems applicable for mass production and put them as an option for everyday use.

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Acknowledgment
The authors would like to thank the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research for funding part of the presented activities.

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