EFFECTS OF REVERSE RADIATION NOISE ON MILLIMETER-WAVE RADIOMETRIC IMAGING AT SHORT RANGE

The existence of reverse radiation noise in the millimeter- wave (MMW) radiometric imaging system with a superheterodyne receiver seriously affects the imaging experiments carried out at short range, thus leading to the degradation of MMW radiometric images and difficulty in recognizing targets. Based on the generation mechanism of reverse radiation noise, the specific influence on imaging for relative radiometry is investigated in this paper, and some methods of eliminating or reducing this noise are proposed. Then, two series of comparative imaging experiments are conducted with a 3mm band radiometric imaging system. Both theoretical analysis and experimental results are presented to validate the actual existence of interference-like stripes imposed by the reverse radiation noise. Moreover, it is proved that adopting an isolator in the MMW receiving front-end can effectively reduce the reverse radiation noise and significantly improve the imaging performance.