Dual polarization millimeter-wave detector for millimeter-wave remote sensing imaging

To meet the great demand of multi polarization millimeter-wave remote sensing imaging, a highly integrated dual polarization millimeter-wave detector is reported. The detector adopts the solid-state electronics scheme. A horn antenna is used to collect the millimeter-wave radiation signal. An ortho-mode transducer structure (OMT) is utilized to orthogonal polarization states of the incident signal into the vertical and horizontal polarization channels. Dual polarization signal power detection is realized by Schottky diode detector after two stage low noise amplifier. The detector, which shows a high level of integration, has two same channels while each channel can receive two orthogonal polarization states of the incident millimeter-wave radiation simultaneously. The measurement results display that the detection band is W-band (75-110 GHz), the average Noise Equivalent Temperature Difference(NETD) reaches 0.3 K(@10 ms), the detector’s size is less than 155 mm×15 mm×20 mm, and the detector’s weight is less than 0.3 kg. Based on the dual polarization detector, an outdoor area in the city has been imaged and various polarization parameter images are generated to analyze the polarization characteristics. The results show that, compared with single polarization remote sensing, dual polarization remote sensing can obtain more polarization information, common objects in urban environment can be highlighted, which is helpful for automatic object recognition, contour extraction in the future, and remote material component recognition.