Design and Implementation of a Near-Field Ultrahigh-Resolution Millimeter-Wave Radar Scanning 3-D Imaging System

The 3-D millimeter-wave imaging systems are known for their advantages, including compact size, low radiation, and excellent penetrability. In recent years, these systems have been widely used in public security inspection, nondestructive testing, and medical diagnosis. However, existing 3-D millimeter-wave radar imaging systems are typically reliant on multielement arrays or multibaseline scanning to achieve high 2-D resolution, which results in significantly increased computational complexity and hardware costs. To address this challenge, sparse sampling methods have been widely employed. Nevertheless, current approaches are predominantly based on uniform random sampling strategies, which restricts their feasibility and practicality in real-world engineering applications. As a result, the development of an efficient imaging system tailored to industrial imaging requirements has been identified as a pressing challenge. In this article, a dual-track scanning-based millimeter-wave radar 3-D imaging system is proposed to simplify the system architecture and reduce computational complexity. The proposed system is designed for direct application in industrial scenarios, such as pipeline workpiece detection. The system is controlled via a host message interface (HMI) and a Zynq UltraScale+ MPSoC platform, enabling operational processes to be significantly streamlined. In addition, to overcome the limitations of traditional methods, including long imaging times and poor practicality, a zigzag sparse scanning pattern is introduced, which enhances imaging efficiency and system practicality. Based on this sparse scanning framework, a matrix completion method called TTSPN that combines the Toeplitz transform with the truncated Schatten-p norm is further proposed, achieving robust and satisfactory recovery performance. In summary, the proposed system is demonstrated to significantly reduce time costs while millimeter-level synthetic aperture ultrahigh-resolution imaging is achieved for multiple targets and scenes. This advancement highlights the system’s potential for practical industrial applications, offering a balance between high performance and operational efficiency.