Active Remote Sensing Radiometer

Millimeter-wave (mm-wave) imaging techniques are already a popular solution for imaging through dust and fog. While mm-wave offers excellent penetration to dust when compared with infrared or optical sensing, the longer wavelengths create many problems associated with the specular response of surfaces at mm-wave. Generally, at mm-wave, the geometry and orientation of the target object has a larger influence on captured contrast than material properties by several orders of magnitude. While these effects can be somewhat mitigated with a radar imager, there is still a large contrast dependence on beam-target angle, and images are still entirely derived from geometry instead of material compositions.