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Caltech

Caltech Mixed-Signal, RF and Microwave Seminar

Friday, May 10, 2013
4:00pm to 5:00pm
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Moore B280
High-Resolution mm-Wave Pulsed Radar for Imaging and Gesture Detection
Amin Arbabian, Assistant Professor , Electrical Engineering, Stanford University,

 

Wideband mm-wave beamforming arrays have applications in medical and structural imaging, gesture recognition, navigation, and high-speed communication.  There has been a continued effort towards realizing low-cost, high-resolution, and large-scale arrays at microwave and mm-wave frequencies. This talk will highlight some of our recent work in designing scalable solutions for silicon-based sub-THz beamformers. 

Key challenges with design of extremely wideband pulsed-based mm-wave arrays will be discussed. Several novel approaches for extreme wideband amplification plus narrow and accurately controllable mm-wave pulse generation, the major issues in attaining image quality, are addressed. In particular, a 94GHz single-chip pulsed-radar transceiver with over 30GHz of pulse bandwidth and 10GHz of center-frequency tuning range is presented. It incorporates true-time beamforming using a PLL/DLL hybrid topology and is capable of full-PRI time-shift, and as a result, large field-of-view 3D imaging. The silicon chip provides delay accuracy down to picosecond level translating to sub-mm RMS error in imaging voxels. Interferometric measurements, made possible by phase coherency of the pulsed-radar, enable sub-mm resolution in ranging. In the end, future directions and some of the applications of this technology will be discussed.

For more information, please contact Michelle Chen by email at [email protected] or visit http://ee2.caltech.edu/calendar/index.html.