Measured comparison of contrast and crossover periods for passive millimeter-wave polarimetric imagery.

Several targets are set-up outside and imaged by a passive millimeter-wave sensor over a 24 hour period. The sensor is capable of measuring two linear polarization states simultaneously and the contrasts of the targets are compared for the different polarizations. The choice of polarization is shown to have an impact on the contrast of different targets throughout the day. In an extreme case the contrast of a target experiences a crossover event and disappears for one polarization while it presents a strong contrast (9 K) with the other polarization. Experimental results are shown along with a simulation of the scene using a ray tracing program.

Passive 77 GHz millimeter-wave sensor based on optical upconversion.

A passive millimeter-wave (mmW) sensor operating at a frequency of 77 GHz is built and characterized. The sensor is a single pixel sensor that raster scans to create an image. Optical upconversion is used to convert the incident mmW signal into an optical signal for detection. Components were picked to be representative of a single element in a distributed aperture system. The performance of the system is analyzed, and the noise equivalent temperature difference is found to be 0.5 K (for a 1 s integration time) with a diffraction limited resolution of ~8 mrad. Representative images are shown that demonstrate the phenomenology associated with this spectrum.