Shaolin Liao

Passive millimeter-wave imaging with compressive sensing

Abstract. Passive millimeter-wave (PMMW) imagers using a single radiometer, called single pixel imagers, employ raster scanning to produce images. A serious drawback of such a single pixel imaging system is the long acquisition time needed to produce a high-fidelity image, arising from two factors: (a) the time to scan the whole scene pixel by pixel and (b) the integration time for each pixel to achieve adequate signal to noise ratio. Recently, compressive sensing (CS) has been developed for single-pixel optical cameras to significantly reduce the imaging time and at the same time produce high-fidelity images by exploiting the sparsity of the data in some transform domain. While the efficacy of CS has been established for single-pixel optical systems, its application to PMMW imaging is not straightforward due to its (a) longer wavelength by three to four orders of magnitude that suffers high diffraction losses at finite size spatial waveform modulators and (b) weaker radiation intensity, for example, by eight orders of magnitude less than that of infrared. We present the development and implementation of a CS technique for PMMW imagers and shows a factor-of-ten increase in imaging speed.

Compact Millimeter-Wave Sensor for Remote Monitoring of Vital Signs

A compact millimeter-wave (MMW) sensor has been developed for remote monitoring of human vital signs (heart and respiration rate). The low-power homodyne transceiver operating at 94 GHz was assembled by using solid-state active and passive block-type components and can be battery operated. A description of the MMW system front end and the back-end acquisition hardware and software is presented. Representative test case results on the application of various signal processing and data analysis algorithms developed to extract faint physiological signals of interest in presence of strong background interference are provided. Although the laboratory experiments so far have been limited to standoff distances of up to 15 m, the upper limit of the detection range is expected to be higher. In comparison with its microwave counterparts, the MMW system described here provides higher directivity, increased sensitivity, and longer detection range for measuring subtle mechanical displacements associated with heart and respiration functions. The system may be adapted for use in a wide range of standoff sensing applications including for patient health care, structural health monitoring, nondestructive testing, biometric sensing, and remote vibrometry in general.

A real-time heart rate analysis for a remote millimeter wave I-Q sensor

This paper analyzes heart rate (HR) information from physiological tracings collected with a remote millimeter wave (mmW) I-Q sensor for biometric monitoring applications. A parameter optimization method based on the nonlinear Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm is used. The mmW sensor works at 94 GHz and can detect the vital signs of a human subject from a few to tens of meters away. The reflected mmW signal is typically affected by respiration, body movement, background noise, and electronic system noise. Processing of the mmW radar signal is, thus, necessary to obtain the true HR. The down-converted received signal in this case consists of both the real part (I-branch) and the imaginary part (Q-branch), which can be considered as the cosine and sine of the received phase of the HR signal. Instead of fitting the converted phase angle signal, the method directly fits the real and imaginary parts of the HR signal, which circumvents the need for phase unwrapping. This is particularly useful when the SNR is low. Also, the method identifies both beat-to-beat HR and individual heartbeat magnitude, which is valuable for some medical diagnosis applications. The mean HR here is compared to that obtained using the discrete Fourier transform.

Compressive passive millimeter-wave imaging

In this paper, we present a novel passive millimeter-wave (PMMW) imaging system designed using compressive sensing principles. We employ randomly encoded masks at the focal plane of the PMMW imager to acquire incoherent measurements of the imaged scene. We develop a Bayesian reconstruction algorithm to estimate the original image from these measurements, where the sparsity inherent to typical PMMW images is efficiently exploited. Comparisons with other existing reconstruction methods show that the proposed reconstruction algorithm provides higher quality image estimates. Finally, we demonstrate with simulations using real PMMW images that the imaging duration can be dramatically reduced by acquiring only a few measurements compared to the size of the image.

Millimeter-wave scattering from neutral and charged water droplets

We investigated 94 GHz millimeter-wave (MMW) scattering from neutral and charged water mist produced in the laboratory with an ultrasonic atomizer. Diffusion charging of the mist was accomplished with a negative ion generator (NIG). We observed increased forward- and backscattering of MMW from charged mist, as compared to MMW scattering from an uncharged mist. In order to interpret the experimental results, we developed a model based on classical electrodynamics theory of scattering from a dielectric sphere with diffusion-deposited mobile surface charge. In this approach, scattering and extinction cross-sections are calculated for a charged Rayleigh particle with effective dielectric constant consisting of the volume dielectric function of the neutral sphere and surface dielectric function due to the oscillation of the surface charge in the presence of applied electric field. For small droplets with radius smaller than 100 nm, this model predicts increased MMW scattering from charged mist, which is qualitatively consistent with the experimental observations. The objective of this work is to develop indirect remote sensing of radioactive gases via their charging action on atmospheric humid air.

Compressive sampling in passive millimeter-wave imaging

We present a Hadamard transform based imaging technique and have implemented it on a single-pixel passive millimeter-wave imager in the 146-154 GHz range. The imaging arrangement uses a set of Hadamard transform masks of size p x q at the image plane of a lens and the transformed image signals are focused and collected by a horn antenna of the imager. The cyclic nature of Hadamard matrix allows the use of a single extended 2-D Hadamard mask of size (2p-1) x (2q-1) to expose a p x q submask for each acquisition by raster scanning the large mask one pixel at a time. A total of N = pq acquisitions can be made with a complete scan. The original p x q image may be reconstructed by a simple matrix operation. Instead of full N acquisitions, we can use a subset of the masks for compressive sensing. In this regard, we have developed a relaxation technique that recovers the full Hadamard measurement space from sub-sampled Hadamard acquisitions. We have reconstructed high fidelity images with 1/9 of the full Hadamard acquisitions, thus reducing the image acquisition time by a factor of 9.

Passive Millimeter-Wave Dual-Polarization Imagers

We have developed two passive millimeter-wave imagers for terrestrial remote sensing: one is an integrated imaging and spectroscopy system in the 146-154-GHz range with 16 channels of 500-MHz bandwidth each, and the other is a single-channel dual-polarized imaging radiometer in the 70-100-GHz range. The imaging in both systems is implemented through translation of a 15-cm Gaussian dielectric imaging lens. We compared the outdoor images of objects such as car, vegetation, sky, and ground by both the systems under various weather conditions, including clear, cloudy, and rainy times. A ray-tracing simulation with radiative transfer equation was used to quantify the polarization diversity of the acquired images.

Passive Millimeter Wave Imaging and Spectroscopy System for Terrestrial Remote Sensing

We have built a passive millimeter wave imaging and spectroscopy system with a 15-channel filter bank in the 146-154 GHz band for terrestrial remote sensing. We had built the spectroscopy system first and have now retrofitted an imaging element to it as a single pixel imager. The imaging element consisted of a 15-cm-diameter imaging lens fed to a corrugated scalar horn. Image acquisition is carried out by scanning the lens with a 2-axis translation stage. A LabVIEW-based software program integrates the imaging and spectroscopy systems with online display of spectroscopic information while the system scans each pixel position. The software also allows for integrating the image intensity of all 15 channels to increase the signal-to-noise ratio by a factor of ~4 relative to single channel image. The integrated imaging and spectroscopy system produces essentially 4-D data in which spatial data are along 2 dimensions, spectral data are in the 3rd dimension, and time is the 4th dimension. The system performance was tested by collecting imaging and spectral data with a 7.5-cm-diameter and 1m long gas cell in which test chemicals were introduced against a liquid nitrogen background.

An efficient iterative algorithm for computation of scattering from dielectric objects.

We have developed an efficient iterative algorithm for electromagnetic scattering of arbitrary but relatively smooth dielectric objects. The algorithm iteratively adapts the equivalent surface currents until the electromagnetic fields inside and outside the dielectric objects match the boundary conditions. Theoretical convergence is analyzed for two examples that solve scattering of plane waves incident upon air/dielectric slabs of semi-infinite and finite thicknesses. We applied the iterative algorithm for simulation of sinusoidally-perturbed dielectric slab on one side and the method converged for such unsmooth surfaces. We next simulated the shift in radiation pattern of a 6-inch dielectric lens for different offsets of the feed antenna on the focal plane. The result is compared to that of the Geometrical Optics (GO).

Nuclear Radiation-Induced Atmospheric Air Breakdown in a Spark Gap

We have investigated the effect of pre-ionization by a radioactive -ray source on the atmospheric air breakdown conditions in a high-voltage spark gap. A standoff millimeter-wave (mmW) system was used to monitor the breakdown properties. A decrease in breakdown threshold was observed with an increase of radiation dose. We attribute this to a space charge-controlled electron diffusion process in a cloud of radiation-induced ion species of both polarities. The space charge-dependent diffusion coefficient was determined from the measurement data. In addition, we found that the breakdown process shows random spikes with Poisson-like statistical feature. These findings portend the feasibility of remote detection of nuclear radiation using high-power mmWs.