Evaluation of Passive Millimeter Wave System Performance in Adverse Weather Conditions

Passive millimeter wave (PMMW) imaging has shown distinct advantages for detection of terrestrial targets under optically obscuring conditions such as cloud, haze, snow, and light rain. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the performance of a PMMW imager for terrestrial target recognition with respect to range of detection and climatic variables such as cloud, light rain, and snow. We used a dual polarization MMW radiometer in the frequency range of 70-100 GHz for the evaluation. We present experimental results and analyze the effect of weather conditions on the image quality and its polarization contrast. These results will be useful for quantitative prediction of PMMW system performance for long-range terrestrial imaging.