A `Microwave Eye' Can be Almost Human

Abstract

Microwave imagery is commonly accepted to have inherently lower resolution than optical systems produce, and small scale microwave imaging systems should be particularly poor in this respect. Since Man is an optical imaging system, and also the ultimate recognition system, it is interesting to compare his performance with a microwave lens system which remotely images suitably reflecting targets. It is shown that the microwave system resolution can be only one order of magnitude inferior to the human eye-brain response. Given that recognition of objects is performed on their low spatial frequency components, the small scale microwave imaging system is comparable to human performance for simple target shapes.