Polarimetric ultrawideband MIMO radar for security check points: Detecting and classifying suspects carrying wires

The polarimetric scattering signatures of targets have been considered as potential source of information for target classification in radar. Besides, the use of ultrawideband (UWB) and multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) real-time systems offers additional advantages jointly with polarimetric antennas. Such systems allow extracting high resolution impulse responses and polarimetric covariance information of targets from different aspect angles. This paper presents the application of a polarimetric-UWB-MIMO radar system for detection and classification of suspects in security check points, with special focus in detecting suspects carrying wires by applying multivariate statistics. The classification process has been based on the Mahalanobis distance between different targets and has shown high success rate in a reference anechoic scenario.