14 DAY TRIAL // Researchers with the Lincoln Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) announce the development of a new type of radar technology, which enables users to see through walls. This would have seemed the stuff of science-fiction only a few years ago.
In order to understand this innovation it's important to remember that the human eye sees because photons slamming into surfaces bounce off them, and eventually make their way into our retinas. When a wall is in front of us, only diminutive amounts of photons pass through, and then back out.
The same goes for radar wavelengths. Researchers have known for quite some time that some of the radio waves aimed at walls pass through, and that even fewer such photons return. Still, the MIT group was able to use this effect to create the new technology.
At this point, the entire system fits into an average shopping cart, but the team says that it could become smaller as the technology is refined. The actual radar is made up of a row of 8 receiving antennas, which are placed above 13 transmitting antennas.
The rest of the cart is filled with computing equipment and related apparatus. According to project leader and Lincoln Lab technical staff member Gregory Charvat, the new system could be of tremendous use for soldiers fighting in urban environments.
Researchers tested their system on four- and eight-inch-thick (10.16 and 20.32 centimeters, respectively) concrete walls. They say that the walls absorb more than 99 percent of the radio waves on the way out, and an additional 99 percent of what remains on the way back.
As such, the signals that makes it back through the wall has only 0.0025 percent of its original strength. Oddly enough, the team says that this is not its main challenge, since signal “amplifiers are cheap, Charvat explains.
However, achieving the speed, resolution and range necessary to be useful in real time is an incredibly complex task. “If you’re in a high-risk combat situation, you don’t want one image every 20 minutes, and you don’t want to have to stand right next to a potentially dangerous building,” the expert says.
The device the MIT team produced is capable of producing a real-time video with a rate of nearly 11 frames per second. In order to appear seamless to the human eye, a video needs to roll at speeds of 24 frames per second or above.
“It’s a very capable system mainly because of its real-time imaging capability. It also gives very good resolution, due to digital processing and advanced algorithms for image processing. It’s a little bit large and bulky for someone to take out in the field,” comments Robert Burkholder.
The expert, who holds an appointment as a research professor at the Ohio State University Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, was not a part of this research.
