Raytheon's Approach to a Passive mmW High-Throughput Concealed Weapons Detection Portal

• NCJ Number: 228733
• Date Published: November 2009
• Length: 10 pages
• Grant Number(s): 2007-DE-BX-K180
• Agencies: NIJ-Sponsored
• Publication Type: Report (Technical)

Annotation

The goal of the Raytheon program described in this report is to provide to law enforcement personnel an affordable, high-throughput passive imaging system with sufficient sensitivity, resolution, and scan speed to rapidly and accurately detect concealed weapons, including knives, razor blades, guns, bullets, and explosives.

Abstract

The project involves a two-phase, 24-month operation. The current report focuses on phase I procedures and accomplishments. In phase I, an advanced electromagnetic (EM) simulator was used to model the following antenna designs in order to optimize the collection of radiation from 75 to 140 GHz: square spiral, log-periodic, and folded dipole. Each antenna was selected to be modeled because of its unique ability to meet the program goals. For phase I, two different methodologies were proposed to develop and demonstrate mmW imaging. The first possible approach for image generation was to rotate the linear array of detectors at a constant speed in only a single direction. The second approach for a high-throughput concealed weapons detection (CWD) imaging system is for the detector assembly, which includes a lens and a stationary linear detector array, in order to step and scan across the suspect standing in the high-throughput CWD imaging portal. In order to prepare for the imaging demonstration several key pieces of hardware were procured in order to build an eight-channel prototyping board using commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) operational electronics. The operation of the prototyping board is described in this report. The imaging demonstration of the eight-channel linear array is described. The next phase of the project will improve the sensitivity of the devices by using micro-lenses and mmW ARC to progress toward achieving passive mmW imaging. In addition, a larger linear array with the proper center-to-center spacing will be developed, eliminating the need for raster scanning. The larger array will also enable imaging of larger targets. 9 figures and 1 table