Comparison of 10–18 GHz SAR and MIMO-based short-range imaging radars

This paper presents an experimental investigation of two approaches to short-range radar imaging at microwaves by means of ultra-wideband (UWB) technology. The first approach represents a classical synthetic aperture radar (SAR) that employs a transmit–receive antenna pair on mechanical scanner. The second one makes use of a multiple input multiple output (MIMO) antenna array that scans electronically in the horizontal plane and mechanically, installed on the scanner, in the vertical plane. The mechanical scanning in only one direction reduces significantly the measurement time. Two respective prototypes have been built and compared. Both systems comprise the same 10–18 GHz antennas and multi-channel video impulse electronics while the same data processing and imaging method based on Kirchhoff migration is applied to acquired data for digital beamforming. The study has been done for an application of concealed weapon detection.