Publications

Ultra-wideband (UWB) technology has achieved a high degree of maturity. One important field of applications marks radar sensing, given the high temporal and spatial resolution of UWB signals, their deep electromagnetic wave penetration through matter, low integral power, and the co-existence of UWB systems with narrow-band radio systems. The focus of this presentation will be on UWB sensors for biomedical diagnostics and imaging, exploiting motional features (e.g., for remote sensing of vital functions), permittivity contrast resulting from the specific water concentration in biological tissues (e.g., for breast cancer detection), or navigator techniques (e.g., for magnetic resonance imaging, MRI). The talk aims at highlighting the potential and remaining challenges for such applications, and providing an overview of current UWB systems and their distinctive features. Special attention shall be paid to related research that has been conducted recently in the framework of the priority programme of the German Research Foundation (DFG) entitled "Ultra-wideband Radio Technologies for Communications, Localisation, and Sensing - UCOLOS".

A contact-less, interference-free approach for the detection of cardiac mechanics and respiration by means of multi-channel ultra-wideband (UWB) radar was developed [2], suitable to deliver trigger signals for cardiac MR imaging. Compared to previous systems we increased the number of antennas to four transmitters and eight receiver antennas. This allows measurements of up to 32 channels and makes UWB motion detection less sensitive to the particular positioning of the antennas relative to the heart.

Ultra-wideband active array imaging has proven extremely valuable for biomedical diagnostics. At the same time, the underlying technologies have achieved a high degree of maturity. Across institutions, we have merged our expertise in M-sequence radar systems, antennas, low-noise and high-power circuitry, to devise an UWB MIMO radar system for breast tumour localisation. Recent progress in UWB imaging and hardware for active antenna arrays is presented.