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CHENG Yayun, XU Zixiang, WANG Nannan, et al. Brightness temperature modeling and dynamic evolution analysis of passive millimeter-wave imaging for typical targets[J]. Journal of Radars, in press. doi: 10.12000/JR26089
Citation: CHENG Yayun, XU Zixiang, WANG Nannan, et al. Brightness temperature modeling and dynamic evolution analysis of passive millimeter-wave imaging for typical targets[J]. Journal of Radars, in press. doi: 10.12000/JR26089
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Brightness Temperature Modeling and Dynamic Evolution Analysis of Passive Millimeter-wave Imaging for Typical Targets

DOI: 10.12000/JR26089 CSTR: 32380.14.JR26089
  • 1.

    School of Electronics and Information Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150001, China

  • 2.

    School of Marine Information Engineering, Hainan Tropical Ocean University, Sanya 572022, China

Funds:  Open Fund Project of State Key Laboratory of Electromagnetic Space Security, The National Natural Science Foundation of China (62571165), Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (XNJKKGYDJ2026004)
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  • Corresponding author: WANG Nannan, wangnn@hit.edu.cn
  • Received Date: 2026-05-09
  • Rev Recd Date: 2026-08-25
    • Available Online: 2026-08-28
    Abstract
  • Passive millimeter-wave imaging technology has demonstrated considerable application potential for airborne target surveillance because it has quasi-all-weather operational capability and does not actively emit electromagnetic signals. This paper focuses on typical civil aviation airliner targets and investigates their brightness temperature modeling and the evolution of their radiometric characteristics during dynamic flight. First, an inherent millimeter-wave radiation model for aircraft targets is constructed using the ray-tracing method and the radiation mechanism of coated metals. Scaled-model measurement experiments for comparison and validation confirm the accuracy of the theoretical simulations. Second, two typical dynamic observation scenarios—level cruise flight and takeoff—are systematically simulated, and the effects of observation elevation angle, range, and polarization on the target’s observed brightness temperature are analyzed. Finally, based on the dynamic evolution of brightness temperature, detection capability is assessed, and the maximum detection range is quantitatively evaluated at different observation elevation angles. The results indicate that at low elevation angles, the high brightness temperature of the sky background creates detection blind zones; as the elevation angle increases, target contrast is enhanced and detection range improves; vertical polarization mode yields a greater brightness temperature differential and thus superior detection performance, although the two polarization modes tend to converge at very long ranges. The rational selection of observation elevation angle and polarization mode is key to improving detection performance.

     

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