A system for characterizing a dielectric object situated adjacent to an electrically conductive surface comprises a radiation source configured to radiate electromagnetic energy toward the dielectric object, and a receiver configured to receive scattered electromagnetic energy scattered by the dielectric object and the electrically conductive surface. The system may further comprise a control subsystem, coupled to the radiation source and the receiver, that determines an apparent focal point within the object, determines a phase shift associated with the scattered electromagnetic energy with respect to the electromagnetic energy radiated by the radiation source, and determine a thickness and an index of refraction of the object based, on the apparent focal point and the phase shift. The system may determine the apparent focal point by scanning a calculated focus point of the radiated energy through different depths of the object, and searching for a peak in an amplitude of the scattered energy.

The present invention relates to a portable metal detector adapted for detection of dangerous metallic items carried by individuals, for example during access to a departure lounge in an airport, comprising a casing which houses a transmitter/receiver winding, the casing being extended by a gripping and handling handle, and a processor which feeds a loop of the winding to generate a magnetic field and which detects perturbations of the magnetic field caused by the environment, characterised in that the detector comprises a sensor for detecting orientation of the detector in a vertical position of the handle and which, when the detector is in a vertical position, activates a single dynamic detection mode of the winding whereas, when the detector is in another position, it activates a static operating mode of the winding.

Provided are methods of using electromagnetic waves for detecting metal and/or dielectric objects. Methods include directing microwave and/or mm wave radiation in a predetermined direction using a transmission apparatus, including a transmission element; receiving radiation from an entity resulting from the transmitted radiation using a detection apparatus; and generating one or more detection signals in the frequency domain using the detection apparatus. Methods may include operating a controller, wherein operating the controller includes causing the transmitted radiation to be swept over a predetermined range of frequencies, performing a transform operation on the detection signal(s) to generate one or more transformed signals in the time domain, and determining, from one or more features of the transformed signal, one or more dimensions of a metallic or dielectric object upon which the transmitted radiation is incident. A system and method for remote detection and/or identification of a metallic threat object using late time response (LTR) signals is also disclosed.

A method for generating an image is provided including taking a first active radar image of an object from a first position with a handheld screening device; taking a second active radar image of the object from a second position with the handheld screening device; and generating a third image based on the first active radar image and the second active radar image. A corresponding handheld screening device is provided as well.

A drill head for earth boring, in particular for a horizontal drilling device, includes a housing, a transmitter for generating a radio signal, an antenna and a receiver for receiving a reflected radio signal, wherein the transmitter which is adapted to generate the radio signal includes a direct digital synthesizer.

A device comprises at least: one rotary antenna including at least two parallel rectilinear waveguides; a radar emitting a continuous-wave microwave signal towards the emission guide of the antenna and receiving the signals from the guides of the antenna, which signals are captured by the movable beam, the received signals are the direct component I and the quadrature component; a stereoscopic video camera oriented in the same direction as the movable beam of the rotary antenna and able to record the clothing envelope of the individual, the envelope serving as a reference surface for the measurement of distances to the device; a processor that computes an SAR image of that portion of the body of the individual targeted by the radar and the video camera and who is possibly equipped with one or more objects, from signals received from the radar and the distances measured by the video camera.

A concealed radar imaging system includes a visible light mirror, a radar device positioned behind the visible light mirror, and a processing circuit coupled to the radar device. The visible light mirror includes a reflective layer configured to reflect visible light, and allow a radar signal to pass therethrough. The radar device is configured to transmit the radar signal, receive a reflection of the radar signal, and generate reflection data based on the reflected radar signal. The processing circuit is configured to control operation of the radar device, receive the reflection data from the radar device, and generate imaging data based on the transmitted radar signal and the reflection data.

An apparatus for detecting objects includes a transceiver configured to generate a radar signal, a radar having a transmit antenna configured to transmit the radar signal, and a receive antenna configured to sense a return signal in response to a transmission of the radar signal. The apparatus also includes a processor configured to detect an object based on the return signal. One or more of the transmit antenna or the receive antenna include offset spiral feed antennas.

A multistatic array topology and image reconstruction process for fast 3D near field microwave imaging are presented. Together, the techniques allow for hardware efficient realization of an electrically large aperture and video-rate image reconstruction. The array topology samples the scene on a regular grid of phase centers, using a tiling of multistatic arrays. Following a multistatic-to-monostatic correction, the sampled data can then be processed with the well-known and highly efficient monostatic Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) imaging algorithm. In this work, the approach is described and validated experimentally with the formation of high quality microwave images. The scheme is more than two orders of magnitude more computationally efficient than the backprojection method. In fact, it is so efficient that a cluster of four commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) graphical processing units (GPUs) can render a 3D image of a human-sized scene in 0.048-0.101 seconds.

Systems and methods for performing body scans to ascertain body measurements of a subject. A radar based scanner may be used to generate a three dimensional image of a subject as a point cloud map of electromagnetic radiation reflected from a target region. The point cloud may be mapped to a parametric model of a standard human shape. The mapping may be optimized by adjusting parameters of the parametric model. The resulting parameters of the optimized model may be used to indicate the body measurements of the scanned subject.