18,118 research outputs found
Sparse Active Rectangular Array with Few Closely Spaced Elements
Sparse sensor arrays offer a cost effective alternative to uniform arrays. By
utilizing the co-array, a sparse array can match the performance of a filled
array, despite having significantly fewer sensors. However, even sparse arrays
can have many closely spaced elements, which may deteriorate the array
performance in the presence of mutual coupling. This paper proposes a novel
sparse planar array configuration with few unit inter-element spacings. This
Concentric Rectangular Array (CRA) is designed for active sensing tasks, such
as microwave or ultra-sound imaging, in which the same elements are used for
both transmission and reception. The properties of the CRA are compared to two
well-known sparse geometries: the Boundary Array and the Minimum-Redundancy
Array (MRA). Numerical searches reveal that the CRA is the MRA with the fewest
unit element displacements for certain array dimensions.Comment: 4+1 pages, 5 figures, 1 tabl
Mission Concept for the Single Aperture Far-Infrared (SAFIR) Observatory
The Single Aperture Far-InfraRed (SAFIR) Observatory's science goals are
driven by the fact that the earliest stages of almost all phenomena in the
universe are shrouded in absorption by and emission from cool dust and gas that
emits strongly in the far-infrared and submillimeter. Over the past several
years, there has been an increasing recognition of the critical importance of
this spectral region to addressing fundamental astrophysical problems, ranging
from cosmological questions to understanding how our own Solar System came into
being. The development of large, far-infrared telescopes in space has become
more feasible with the combination of developments for the James Webb Space
Telescope and of enabling breakthroughs in detector technology. We have
developed a preliminary but comprehensive mission concept for SAFIR, as a 10
m-class far-infrared and submillimeter observatory that would begin development
later in this decade to meet the needs outlined above. Its operating
temperature (<4K) and instrument complement would be optimized to reach the
natural sky confusion limit in the far-infrared with diffraction-limited
peformance down to at least 40 microns. This would provide a point source
sensitivity improvement of several orders of magnitude over that of Spitzer or
Herschel, with finer angular resolution, enabling imaging and spectroscopic
studies of individual galaxies in the early universe. We have considered many
aspects of the SAFIR mission, including the telescope technology, detector
needs and technologies, cooling method and required technology developments,
attitude and pointing, power systems, launch vehicle, and mission operations.
The most challenging requirements for this mission are operating temperature
and aperture size of the telescope, and the development of detector arrays.Comment: 36 page
Snapshot coronagraphy with an interferometer in space
Diluted arrays of many optical apertures will be able to provide h
igh-resolution snapshot images if the beams are combined according to the
densified-pupil scheme. We show that the same principle can also provide
coronagraphic images, for detecting faint sources near a bright unresolved one.
Recent refinements of coronagraphic techniques, i.e. the use of a phase mask,
active apodization and dark-speckle analysis, are also applicable for enhanced
contrast. Implemented in the form of a proposed 50-500m Exo-Earth Discoverer
array in space, the principle can serve to detect Earth-like exo-planets in the
infra-red. It can also provide images of faint nebulosity near stars, active
galactic nuclei and quasars. Calculations indicate that exo-planets are
detectable amidst the zodiacal and exo-zodiacal emission faster than with a
Bracewell array of equivalent area, a consequence of the spatial selectivity in
the image.Comment: 23 pages, 10 figures, to appear in Icaru
Observing---and Imaging---Active Galactic Nuclei with the Event Horizon Telescope
Originally developed to image the shadow region of the central black hole in
Sagittarius A* and in the nearby galaxy M87, the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT)
provides deep, very high angular resolution data on other AGN sources too. The
challenges of working with EHT data have spurred the development of new image
reconstruction algorithms. This work briefly reviews the status of the EHT and
its utility for observing AGN sources, with emphasis on novel imaging
techniques that offer the promise of better reconstructions at 1.3 mm and other
wavelengths.Comment: 10 pages, proceedings contribution for Blazars through Sharp
Multi-Wavelength Eyes, submitted to Galaxie
Computational polarimetric microwave imaging
We propose a polarimetric microwave imaging technique that exploits recent
advances in computational imaging. We utilize a frequency-diverse cavity-backed
metasurface, allowing us to demonstrate high-resolution polarimetric imaging
using a single transceiver and frequency sweep over the operational microwave
bandwidth. The frequency-diverse metasurface imager greatly simplifies the
system architecture compared with active arrays and other conventional
microwave imaging approaches. We further develop the theoretical framework for
computational polarimetric imaging and validate the approach experimentally
using a multi-modal leaky cavity. The scalar approximation for the interaction
between the radiated waves and the target---often applied in microwave
computational imaging schemes---is thus extended to retrieve the susceptibility
tensors, and hence providing additional information about the targets.
Computational polarimetry has relevance for existing systems in the field that
extract polarimetric imagery, and particular for ground observation. A growing
number of short-range microwave imaging applications can also notably benefit
from computational polarimetry, particularly for imaging objects that are
difficult to reconstruct when assuming scalar estimations.Comment: 17 pages, 15 figure
Array imaging of localized objects in homogeneous and heterogeneous media
We present a comprehensive study of the resolution and stability properties
of sparse promoting optimization theories applied to narrow band array imaging
of localized scatterers. We consider homogeneous and heterogeneous media, and
multiple and single scattering situations. When the media is homogeneous with
strong multiple scattering between scatterers, we give a non-iterative
formulation to find the locations and reflectivities of the scatterers from a
nonlinear inverse problem in two steps, using either single or multiple
illuminations. We further introduce an approach that uses the top singular
vectors of the response matrix as optimal illuminations, which improves the
robustness of sparse promoting optimization with respect to additive noise.
When multiple scattering is negligible, the optimization problem becomes linear
and can be reduced to a hybrid- method when optimal illuminations are
used. When the media is random, and the interaction with the unknown
inhomogeneities can be primarily modeled by wavefront distortions, we address
the statistical stability of these methods. We analyze the fluctuations of the
images obtained with the hybrid- method, and we show that it is stable
with respect to different realizations of the random medium provided the
imaging array is large enough. We compare the performance of the
hybrid- method in random media to the widely used Kirchhoff migration
and the multiple signal classification methods
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