Localization of small moving objects using only total fields in microwave imaging

•We address the problem of real-time microwave imaging where the incident field information cannot be measured directly.•To obtain incident field information, we propose a statistical method to estimate from the measured total field information.•The proposed method is verified through experiments to localize a small moving object. Microwave imaging for object localization utilizes the differences in scattering parameter data measured with and without the object of interest. However, in the real world, it is often impossible to measure incident fields in the background medium without the object. This contribution presents a method to estimate scattered field data through simple statistical processing of the measured total field data and apply it to reconstruct localized images of small moving objects. The effectiveness of the proposed method was experimentally verified.