TT--RRAAYYSS

VS
TERRORISTS

EECC00222266

GIRIDHAR GOPAL.KANDEPI,
II/IV B.Tech,
E.C.E,
gopalkandepi@yahoo.co.in
SRIKANTH.G,
II/IV B.Tech,
E.C.E,
srikanthg453@yahoo.com

Abstract
We have recently witnessed the series of bomb blasts in Hyderabad and in Lucknow due to
TERRORISTS Action. Bombs killed many people in the Lumbini park and in the Gokul chats and
left many injured. On August 25th Two explosions took place at two different places with in short
span of time and make the Indians in terror. This situation is not limited to Hyderabad but it can
happen any where and any time in the world. Not only in India but many countries all over the world
are facing one of the major problem is Terrorists activity. We have seen that due to Terrorists
activities bombs have killed more than 2000 people in Iraq alone and make many people injured.
People think bomb blasts cant be predicted before handled. Here we show you the
technology which predicts the suicide bombers and explosion of weapons through Terahetz
radiation (T-rays).
T-ray technology will probably find its first big uses in security-related applications, now an
enormously fast-growing business because of recent high-profile terrorist attacks. Not only that but
they can tell what those objects are made of. Many explosives, including all the plastic explosives
popular with terrorist groups, reflect and transmit a characteristic combination of terahertz waves
that make them distinguishable from other materials, even those that might seem identical to the
eye and hand.
Here in the present paper we describe the different levels, schemes and techniques of
detections information by using T-Rays.

Introduction
If you may remember those miraculous -sounding X-ray specs advertised in comic
books. Theyd let you see through walls, boxes, and best of all, for a teenager, anywayclothing.
They were bogus, of course. But technology is finally on the limit of giving us all those capabilities,
and more, although in a package too big to alight on the bridge of your nose.
The key advances are devices and circuitry that emit and sense radiation in the terahertz
band of the electromagnetic spectrum, which extends from the upper edge of microwaves to the
near infrared. The rays are reflected by metal but go through most other materials. Water soaks up

the radiation, so human tissue, which is mostly water, absorbs it. But unlike X-rays, terahertz rays
are thought to be harmless. Terahertz radiation (T-rays) cant penetrate much past your skin, and
it lacks the energy to ionize molecules in human tissue the way X-rays do, so it cannot cause
cancers by smashing up your DNA. The power levels most T-ray imagers produce are lower than
that of the infrared LED in your TV remote control.

T-ray technology will probably find its first big uses in security-related applications, now an
enormously fast-growing business because of recent high-profile terrorist attacks. The technologys
appeal here is patent in a terahertz image, a gun or a knife shines through whatever clothing its
concealed ineven a plastic knife showsup, because of the way its sharp edges scatter the
radiation.
But some terahertz imagers have another ability, not only can they see hidden objects, but
they can tell what those objects are made of. Many explosives, including all the plastic explosives
popular with terrorist groups, reflect and transmit a characteristic combination of terahertz waves
that make them distinguishable from other materials, even those that might seem identical to the
eye and hand. In essence, different materials appear as different colors to the terahertz imaging
system.
Some short-range imagers available now can also do spectroscopy, but the imaging rate is
currently too slow for use in a walk-through scanner. But terahertz sources and devices push the
technologys limits, that can do both imaging and spectroscopy at 50 meters or more.

T-rays are odd:

Theyre not quite what we think of as radio and not quite what we expect from light.
They can radiate from metal antennas as radio waves do, but they also bounce off
ordinary mirrors as light does.
They can be focused with silicon lenses but are typically sensed in a circuit by their electric
field.
T-rays can distinguish normal skin tissue from tumors even when a trained dermatologist
cannot.

 Unlike X-rays, T-ray screeners could be used routinely on people, because the radiation is
harmless.

Range of detection :

Where the terahertz band begins and ends between 500 gigahertz and 10 terahertz, for a
few reasons. That region is largely beyond the reach of pure radio frequency technology such as
microwave circuits, requiring combinations of electronics and optics instead.
Also, many interesting materials such as plastic explosives have distinctive colors in that
region. On the downside, most terahertz radiation is absorbed by the atmosphere. And the
technology that is needed to see in that band is much less mature than, say, the technology for the
region near 100 GHz, whose fundamental components have been around for half a century. Others
choose to define the terahertz band beginning at a lower frequency, 10 GHz in some cases, where
light has a wavelength measured in millimeters. Like higher-frequency T-rays, millimeter waves can
pass through clothing. They find hidden weapons beneath peoples clothing by noting the
difference in the amount of radiation between the warm body and the cooler objects.

Passive imagers:
These devices can see through many of the same materials as T-rays, but they cant
determine an objects chemical makeup the way T-rays can. Also, their resolution is naturally not as
good as terahertz imagers, because as the imaging radiations wavelength gets shorter, an
imagers resolution improves. These scanners are capable of discovering that someone is hiding
something, but that somethinga cellphone, a knife, a bombusually looks like a blob on the
millimeter-wave imager.
The most extreme of theseusing a particle acceleratoris also the most powerful. The
accelerators work well for this purpose, but they typically take up a hectare or more and cost tens of
millions of dollars. Commercial systems, from Picometrix or TeraView.

Concerning the Digital Camera :

The ideal terahertz camera would be just like any digital cameraa dense array of millions
of detectors arranged as pixels on an integrated circuit. Unfortunately, most terahertz detectors lack
the combination of compactness, cheapness, and sensitivity to allow for that. Instead, terahertz
researchers have come up with a number of alternatives that use one or only a few detectors. Two
of the leading approaches are to reconstruct a terahertz image from the way T-rays interfere with
one another or to convert the otherwise invisible rays into something a digital camera can see.
But before you can make a picture, you need to be able to produce the radiation.
Synchrotrons, which accelerate bunches of electrons along an enormous track to nearly the speed
of light, are the brightest sources, but they typically occupy an entire building, and a rather large
one at that. To produce T-rays, the synchrotron forces the fast-moving electrons to make either a

sharp bend or to wriggle through a gauntlet of magnets, both resulting in a shower of T-rays,
though of different bandwidths.
There are many types of T-ray sources that have smaller footprints. These depend on
combining electronics with lasers, befitting the radiations straddling of the two worlds. Gigahertzfrequency oscillation is no big dealthe inexpensive circuits in your cellphone are a testament to
that fact. But its quite another thing to build a circuit that oscillates trillions of times per second at
terahertz rates.
However, they have been able to generate laser pulses so short that 10 trillion or more
could fit in a single second. So the most common commercial method of making T-rays is to drive
an electronic circuit with a picosecond pulse of laser light. Such a T-ray generator is basically a
photosensitive semiconductor with a pair of antennas etched onto its surface. A voltage on the
antennas sets up a strong electric field across the semiconductor between them. When the laser
pulse strikes the semiconductor it creates pairs of charge carriers: electrons and holes. These
accelerate across the semiconductor and through the antennas. For a femtosecond-long pulse, the
rush of current lasts about a picosecond, about the period of one cycle of 1-THz radiation.
The resulting T-ray pulse is weak, with an average power only somewhere around a
microwatt, but its still bright enough to produce still images. And the pulses have a couple of
interesting side benefits. First, as with radar, timing the pulses echo as it bounces off an object
gives the range to that object. Range is useful in processing multilevel T-ray images, such as a
scan of a suitcase that might be difficult to interpret unless it had been scrutinized layer by layer.
Second, pulses let you perform spectroscopy, the identification of a substance by the wavelengths
of light it reflects. This capability comes from the fact that a single pulse actually comprises a broad
swath of T-ray frequencies. You need only analyze the shape of the pulses echo to calculate which
frequencies were absorbed and then look up what substances produce that absorption pattern.
The problem with pulses is that they are quickly absorbed and smeared in air, particularly
humid air. After only a few meters in moist air, a 1-ps pulse lasts 30 ps, and the resolution of an
imageit forms degrades, as does its spectroscopic signal. Fortunately, the terahertz spectrum has a
few transmission windows at frequencies that arent strongly absorbed in air. So one solution is to
generate a continuous wave at one or more of those frequencies.
The continuous-wave sources, basically with the same setup of a laser shining on the
surface of an antenna-equipped semiconductor, but with the femtosecond laser replaced with a
continuous one whose amplitude is oscillating at a terahertz frequency

Focusing two infrared lasers in a device called a photomixer, with the lasers tuned so that
the difference between their frequencies is a frequency corresponding to one of the terahertz
transmission windows. The photomixer combines the lasers so that the resulting light beats at this
terahertz-frequency difference. The beating laser drives a similar photoconductor-antenna structure
to the one used to generate pulses, causing current to flow through it at the terahertz-beat
frequency, thereby generating many microwatts of T-rays.
The optoelectronic methods work well enough, but they are of limited brightness and are
still quite cumbersome. The terahertz want to replace these technologies with a bright, completely
solid-state terahertz laser. Its their best hope of getting imagers smaller, lighter, and cheap enough
to mass-produce, not only because the light source is smaller but also because its higher
brightness would allow for less expensive and more compact detector arrays. The wavelength of
semiconductor lasers is largely determined by the materials that are used to make them, and none
naturally produce T-rays.
A device called a quantum cascade laser, QC lasers can be engineered to emit any of a
range of micrometer-wavelength light, including terahertz wavelengths. The secret to the QC laser
is that its wavelength is determined by the thicknesses of the layers of semiconductor that make it
upsomething that can be carefully controlled.
Heres how it works: lasers emit light when electrons that have been excited to a particular energy
level fall to a lower energy level. A key difference between a laser and an ordinary light emitter is
that there are always more electrons in the excited state than in the lower energy level. In a QC
laser that aspect is guaranteed by sweeping fallen electrons from the lower, unexcited state into a
third state, at a still lower energy level. In the QC laser these energy levels exist in three layers
called quantum wells, each nanometers thick . Quantum wells are structures so thin that, from an
electrons perspective, they are two-dimensional. Confinement in a quantum well makes the
electrons behave as though they were bound to an atom, with their energy constrained to certain
specific levels.

An electron injected into the highest energy level falls to the lower one, emitting radiation
(photons) of a wavelength that is determined by the thicknesses of the quantum wells. The electron
then immediately falls into the still lower third state, emitting a quantum of heat called a phonon.
The same three-layer structure can be repeated more than two dozen times. At each structure the
electron goes through exactly the same dance, emitting the same color photon. So a single electron
can emit 24 or more photons on its journey through the QC laser, as if it were falling down a set of
stairs and emitting a photon at each step.

Revealing of T-rays :

T-rays can be detected in a number of ways. But one of the more common detector types
is merely an extension of T-ray generation technology. Recall the picosecond-pulse generators and
the continuous-wave generators. The laser beam, split it, and feed it to another photoconductive
antenna structure. But instead of applying a voltage across the antennas to push current through
them and generate terahertz radiation, you measure the current through the antennas. As in the
pulse-generation scheme, when the laser pulse hits a photoconductor, it creates short-lived pairs of
electrons and holes. These then flow through the antenna under the influence of the electric field of
incoming terahertz waves. So the current in the antenna, which is amplified, acts as a measure of
terahertz radiation.
Because the detector is sensing T-rays only during the picosecond or so that the laser
pulse allows, it takes several pulses to get the full waveform of the incoming T-rays. To get the full
waveform, small increments of delay in the form of a longer path for the laser are added to the
detectors optical fiber line. Measuring the electric field at a number of increments produces slices
of the terahertz wave that can be pasted together in a computer.

Image making
The simplest way of producing an image is to scan a single transmitter and detector over
an object and record the phase and amplitude of the T-rays that reflect back at each point. State-ofthe-art terahertz-imaging security systems are capable of such raster scanning at a rate of 100
pixels per second, certainly not fast enough for video and only marginal for scanning a bag on a
conveyor belt. A briefcase containing a gun, a glass bottle, and a knife would take half an hour to
scan at a resolution of 1.5 millimeters per pixel using a T-ray pulse-based imager from Picometrix.
Although there are no terahertz camera chips, there are infrared camera chips, and you
can tweak those so they can pick up T-rays. Such chips detect infrared radiation at each pixel
because the radiation reduces the resistance of a minuscule patch of semiconductor there.
Some of these chips are slightly sensitive to terahertz radiation, but to get a decent image
you need a bright source such as the QC lasers under development. Another infrared detector
concept is electro-optic terahertz imaging. In this scheme, T-rays striking certain types of crystal
such as zinc telluridewill cause the crystals index of refraction to change. The result is that the
polarization of infrared light passing through the crystal will rotate. Place a polarization filter
between the crystal and a camera chip so that it blocks out any infrared light that hasnt been
rotated and you get an infrared facsimile of the terahertz image. In a sense, the terahertz radiation
has been shifted up the electromagnetic spectrum into the infrared. Such cameras can produce
pictures in less than one-sixtieth of a second, far quicker than raster scanners and fast enough to
produce video.

In an effort to get both speed and spectroscopy at a reasonable price, can produce
complete images quickly enough for video and at a resolution comparable to what youd expect
from a kilopixel camera chip. The method, called interferometric imaging, relies on a common
mathematical concept used in image processing, the spatial Fourier transform.
According to Fourier theory, any signal can be broken down into the sum of many sine
waves of different frequencies, phases, and amplitudes. Though it is less intuitive, the same can be
said of any image. To get a grasp of spatial frequency in an image, imagine a photo of an American
football referee in the traditional black-and-white vertical-stripe jersey. The spatial Fourier transform
of that image would be dominated by the frequency that matches the jerseys stripes.
The Fourier image is acquired almost instantly, and the main limit on the cameras speed is
the time it takes the computer to digitize the data from the detectors and perform the needed
calculations. The resolution of a reverse-transformed image comes from the number and
arrangement of spatial frequencies represented in the transform. Imagine trying to represent the
picture of the football referee in a Fourier transform, restricting yourself only to the jerseys
frequency and one or two others. When you reverse the transformation you might be able to make
out the bars in the jersey, but the rest of the picture would be a blur. But a transform having dozens,
orbetter yethundreds of spatial frequencies represented would reconstruct the picture
reasonably well.
One of the imagers were developing is made up of 12 detectors arranged in a spiral pattern on a 1meter disk; it can measure 66 spatial frequencies. The imager is good enough to resolve a 2.5centimeter square of RDX plastic explosive at 50 meters.
Powerful as terahertz imaging is, no imaging or detection technology can reliably find every threat
to security. Each technology has its own strengths and weaknesses. But when several are used as
part of a sensor suite, their collective strengths are integrated. As an example, consider how you
would screen trucks at a port or other checkpoint. That said, security screening is a more
challenging application than it might seem at first. It has to work in real-world conditions, has to be
small enough to fit in already crowded spaces such as an airport security checkpoint, and has to
have a very low rate of false alarms. Otherwise it would become a bottleneck in the flow of people
or goods. T-ray imagers are close to meeting all those requirements for short-range scanners, as
long as the additional feature of spectroscopy is excluded. That feature may take a few more years
of work, requiring smaller, brighter T-ray sources and more sensitive detectors. As for imagers that
can see a suspicious object in your shopping bag from 50 meters, those are more like five years
away at our current rate of progress.

Advantages :
T-ray scanners have standoff capability, meaning they can see a few meters away.
Drug companies are buying T-ray imagers for their ability to distinguish good pills from bad
by their spectral signatures.
T-rays can distinguish normal skin tissue from tumors even when a trained dermatologist
cannot.
Manufacturers can do the ordinary job of checking the contents of a box without opening it,
or they can perform such crucial tasks as finding the invisible defects in the protective
coatings on an aircrafts wings.