New radar tech can see through concrete walls!

Much as humans and other animals see via waves of visible light that bounce off objects and then strike our eyes’ retinas,radar “sees” by sending out radio waves that bounce off targets and return to the radar’s receivers.

But just as light can’t pass through solid objects in quantities large enough for the eye to detect,it’s hard to build radar that can penetrate walls well enough to show what’s happening behind.

The researchers’ device is an unassuming array of antenna arranged into two rows – eight receiving elements on top,13 transmitting ones below – and some computing equipment,all mounted onto a movable cart.

It has powerful implications for military operations,especially “urban combat situations,” said Gregory Charvat,technical staff at Lincoln Lab and the leader of the project.

The system may be used at a range of up to 60 feet away from the wall and it gives a real-time picture of movement behind the wall in the form of a video at the rate of 10.8 frames per second.

Because the processor uses a subtraction method – comparing each new picture to the last,and seeing what’s changed – the radar can only detect moving targets,not inanimate objects such as furniture.

Still,even a human trying to stand still moves slightly,and the system can detect these small movements to display that human’s location.

The system digitises the signals it receives into video.

Currently,humans show up as “blobs” that move about the screen in a bird’s-eye-view perspective,as if the viewer were standing on the wall and looking down at the scene behind.

But the researchers are currently working on algorithms that will automatically convert a blob into a clean symbol to make the system more end-user friendly.