High-Performance Microwave Tomographic Imaging and Target Recognition Techniques

The main objectives of this proposed phase-I research program include two major components. The first is to develop high- performance imaging algorithms based on backward propagation image reconstruction technique. Based on this unified framework, the imaging algorithms will have consistent performance in terms of resolution limit, sensitivity, and computational structures. These algorithms will be suitable for both near-field and far- field imaging operations in both active or passive, monostatic or bistatic configurations with the flexible use of various illumination waveforms. The second component of this program is to develop target recognition techniques as an integrated process of the image formation procedure. In microwave imaging, the key characteristics of the target is distributed not only in the space-domain images, but also in the complex-wavefield signatures in the temporal-spectral domain. Because the generalized backward-propagation techniques decompose the wavefield in space-time domain into coherent components for parallel processing, the spatial as well as temporal-spectral variations of the target will be readily available during the image formation process and can be utilized effectively for target recognition.