Simulation of Millimeter Wave Images using Blender

Outline

● Electromagnetic Waves● Millimeter Waves● Simulation in Blender● Simulation Results● Future Work

Electromagnetic Waves

● Solutions to Maxwell's Equations● Travel at the speed of light● Usually obey laws of optics...● … but are actually waves

EM Waves: Polarization

● Transverse vs. longitudinal● Horizontal, vertical, elliptical polarizations

EM Waves: Frequency

EM Waves: Generation and Detection

● Generation:● Excited state → ground state● Laser● Thermal radiation

● Detection:● High-frequency: easy● Low-frequency: easy● Intermediate frequency: really hard

Millimeter Waves

● 30 – 300 GHz● Relatively unexplored spectrum● Dominated by thermal radiation● Natural processes are polarization-selective● Detectors are polarization-sensitive

Millimeter Waves contd.

● Positives:● Low scattering through obscurants● Many materials are transparent● Things look like things

● Negatives:● Difficult to image● High noise● Low resolution

Simulation: Why Blender?

● Mature● Documentation● Tutorials

● Feature-rich● Open-source

● Active development community● Improvements rolled in

Simulation: How?

● Ray optics for passive scenes● Snell's Law● Fresnel Equations● Transfer matrices

● Physical optics for active scenes● Modified radiosity code● Slow, memory-intensive, not very useful

● Post-processing for imager model

Validation: Bricks

Validation: Bikes

Results: Checkpoint Screening

Results: Airplane Landing

Results: Search-and-Rescue

Future Work

● Continue port to 2.5● Bandwidth● GPU

Conclusions

● Blender is great