Spatially resolving antenna arrays using frequency diversity.

Radio imaging devices and synthetic aperture radar typically use either mechanical scanning or phased arrays to illuminate a target with spatially varying radiation patterns. Mechanical scanning is unsuitable for many high-speed imaging applications, and phased arrays contain many active components and are technologically and cost prohibitive at millimeter and terahertz frequencies. We show that antennas deliberately designed to produce many different radiation patterns as the frequency is varied can reduce the number of active components necessary while still capturing high-quality images. This approach, called frequency-diversity imaging, can capture an entire two-dimensional image using only a single transmit and receive antenna with broadband illumination. We provide simple principles that ascertain whether a design is likely to achieve particular resolution specifications, and illustrate these principles with simulations.