PORTLAND, Ore. — Silicon-germanium (SiGe) RF chips now in lab prototype form could one day be used in millimeter-wavelength W-band imaging devices sensitive enough to "see" through clothing to reveal concealed weapons.
EEs from the University of California at San Diego (UCSD) presented their design at the IEEE RFIC Symposium in Boston on June 9. The chip operates in the terahertz range (1 THz = 1,000 GHz) to provide X-ray-like vision, but using safe, naturally occurring millimeter wavelengths. The designers said the chip could be produced using inexpensive silicon processing techniques.
"Our chip can resolve images down to a millimeter scale, enabling us to identify very small objects that are on someone's body," said professor Gabriel Rebeiz, a designer of millimeter-wave RFICs, phased arrays and microelectromechanical system (MEMS) chips, in whose UCSD lab the SiGe terahertz RFICs were built.
In addition to their envisioned use for security applications, terahertz imagers could aid in navigation when storm or dust-cloud conditions limit visibility, as well as transfer enormous amounts of data over secure line-of-sight connections.
Because silicon-based semiconductors do not ordinarily operate above 10 GHz, imager designers today use expensive gallium arsenide or indium phosphide amplifiers. At the RFIC Symposium, however, several designs using CMOS and BiCMOS processes were described in addition to UCSD's SiGe solution, promising less costly processes that could be run on standard silicon fabrication equipment.
"We should be able to bring the costs of those sorts of systems down, perhaps even to handheld scanners," said Jason May, an EE doctoral candidate who works at Rebeiz' UCSD lab.
The lab's terahertz imager prototype implemented a W-band square-law detector in a commercial SiGe process and included an integrated low-noise amplifier and switch on a chip that consumed just 0.26 square millimeters. The chip operated at 94 GHz consuming 29 milliamps from a 1.2-volt supply.
RSS
Digital
10 emerging technologies to watch:
EE Times has compiled a list of emerging technologies that we think will be worth watching out for in 2010. Biofeedback or thought-control of electronics are among the contenders.
10 CEOs out in 2009:
It's been a tough year for the global electronics industry and CEOs. We survey the dismissal of 10 industry CEOs during the first three quarters of 2009 and what's ahead for the rest of the year.
Executive pay:
The economy stinks. Rank-and-file engineers are feeling the pain. What about technology CEOs? We crunched the numbers buried in corporate financial statements to find out. Here's what we found.
10 companies in trouble (revisited):
What follows is an updated version of 10 companies in trouble. Some companies have been removed since the last version, others remain. Still others have been added to the mix.
Early predictions for 2010:
The electronics industry is recovering, but there is still some uncertainty in the market. Some see a boom year in 2010. Some see a double dip. So what's in store for the rest of this year and 2010?
Top 10 IC vendors with cash:
The world's biggest IC companies by revenue rank not only among the best in their respective industry segments but are also more likely to have huge piles of cash that can be used to fund acquisitions, R&D and product development.
Notable women in microelectronics:
There is no better time than a global economic recession to examine the keys to successful corporate governance. So, EE Times has compiled an international list that celebrates women who are business and technology leaders in semis.
EE Times updates Silicon 60:
Seventeen companies have been added to the lastest version of our Silicon 60 list of emerging startups. Forty-three companies survived as emerging companies that are still worth watching.
RSS| 
Digital| 
Mobile
