1. ALERT – Awareness and Localization of
Explosives-Related Threats
Whole Body Imaging with
Millimeter-Wave Radar
Matt Nickerson
Prof. Carey Rappaport, Principal Investigator
Spiros Mantzavinos, Research Assistant
This material is based upon work supported by the U.S. Department of
Homeland Security under Award Number 2008-ST-061-ED0001. The views and
conclusions contained in this document are those of the authors and should
not be interpreted as necessarily representing the official policies, either
expressed or implied, of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

2. Overall Project Goal
Improve upon whole body scanners
currently used in airports.

3. Current State of the Art

4. Our design
Razor blade
antenna
Reconstruction Rx Arc arrays
plane

5. Simulation

6. The Setup
Transmitter
Reflector
Target
Receiver

8. Material Shape and Location

10. My Goals
 Speed and Quality
 New Hardware and Programming

11. Hardware
VNA
Digitizer
Scope

12. Programming

13. Speed and Quality
VNA Scope Digitizer
2.5 hours 30 minutes 22 minutes

14. Threat Detection

15. Next Steps
 Improve image collection speeds
– Better Digitizer Card
– Arbitrary Waveform Generator
 Improve image quality
– Mechanical setup
– Algorithms

16. Acknowledgements
 Professor Carey Rappaport; Principal Investigator
 Spiros Mantzavinos, Yolanda Rodriguez-Baqueiro, Professor
Jose Martinez; Research Assistants
 Borja Gonzalez-Valdes; Post-Doctoral Researcher
 Dan Busoic; Consultant
 Richard Moore; Research Advisor
 Funded by the U.S. Department of
Homeland Security (DHS)

17. Questions?