A Novel Antenna Array Design Method Based on Antenna Grouping for Near-Field Passive Millimeter-Wave Imaging

In synthetic aperture interferometric radiometers applied in near-field passive millimeter-wave (PMMW) imaging, array configuration design is a crucial issue. In practical applications, it is difficult to balance the complexity of system hardware and imaging performance. Conventionally, the minimum redundancy array can achieve the highest spatial resolution with a given number of antenna elements, but there are no redundant baselines in the near-field PMMW imaging. In this letter, we propose a novel array configuration approach by grouping array antennas. First, we maintain the original array configuration, but divide the antenna array into two groups, and only calculate the visibility function between the elements from different groups. After that we apply the simulated annealing algorithm to optimize the performance of the imaging system. The results of simulation and measurement demonstrate that the proposed method is an advantageous, effective array design method for PMMW imaging.