Near-field millimeter - wave imaging of nonmetallic materials

A near-field millimeter-wave (mm-wave) imaging system has been designed and built in the 94-GHz range for on-line inspection of nonmetallic (dielectric) materials. The imaging system consists of a transceiver block coupled to an antenna that scans the material to be imaged; a reflector plate is placed behind the material. A quadrature IF mixer in the transceiver block enables measurement of in-phase and quadrature-phase components of reflected signals with respect to the transmitted signal. All transceiver components, with the exception of the Gunn-diode oscillator and antenna, were fabricated in uniform blocks and integrated and packaged into a compact unit (12.7 x 10.2 x 2.5 cm). The objective of this work is to test the applicability of a near-field compact mm-wave sensor for on-line inspection of sheetlike materials such as paper, fabrics, and plastics. This paper presents initial near-field mm-wave images of paper and fabric samples containing known artifacts