**7. Summary**

432 Ultra-Wideband Radio Technologies for Communications, Localization and Sensor Applications

compliance with the actual and intended applications needs.

protected by top glue.

based sensing unit assembly (right).

clock port (not shown in the photograph). This signal comes on board through an SMP connector and toggles the analyzed assembly. The toggle rate for the packaged prototype can be chosen quite flexibly between 0.5 and about 19 GHz, which implies a good

**Figure 61.** Evaluation board for Single-Chip sensor head. The wired die (close-up photograph) is

**Figure 62.** Generic transceiver test configuration (left) and an example of an experimental M-sequence

Interchannel cross-talk plays an important role in many applications. As Tx-Rx-decoupling up to 130 dB could be reached if the individual components are properly shielded (see Fig. 57, left), an interesting question is how the single chip devices behave with respect to that problem even though decoupling design techniques are implemented [2]. Fig. 63 shows the results for on-wafer measurements and the housed chip. Obviously, the chip design outperforms the quality of the chip wiring with respect to the cross-talk performance. The impulse response function of the housed chip is also shown in Fig. 63 (left). It was gained using the configuration as depicted in Fig. 62 (left). The cross-talk pulse can clearly be identified. However, it should be noted that it can largely be suppressed by post-processing Electromagnetic sounding for non-destructive and remote sensing, respectively, has been exploited for a long time. However, its practical application was mostly restricted to narrow-band sensors or it was banned to the laboratory in the case of wideband examinations. The reason for this limitation has been the lack of reasonable wideband measurement equipment.

The first field deployable ultra wideband devices were used in ground-penetrating radar (GPR). They mostly exploited powerful nanosecond or sub-nanosecond pulses to feed the transmission antenna. Meanwhile, several other UWB-sensor techniques have been introduced. Section 2 summarizes the most popular of them. The challenges of corresponding research and development are mainly to be seen in the performance improvement of the sensor electronics and its monolithic integration aimed at cost and power reduction.

The main part of the chapter deals with a pseudo-noise UWB approach and its main components. The pseudo-noise concept is an interesting alternative to other wideband sensing principles promoting both high device performance and monolithic integration. Due to its simple and rigid synchronization, it provides exact and time-stable signal generation and signal capture which promotes:


The most relevant RF components of a pseudo-noise sensor cover the test signal generation (i.e. pseudo noise code), the analog handling of the receive signals, and the high-speed conversion of the analog signals to the digital domain. Device concepts suited for these tasks are discussed in sections 3 to 5. Due to special requirements set by the application and the applied semiconductor technology, innovative solutions are presented. Among those are a distributed power amplifier with a novel cascode gain cell, new subtraction amplifiers, an analog-to-digital converter with a new reference network, and a high-speed predictor. Also, appropriate verification schemes are presented. A final section referring to implemented devices as they were applied in other UoKoLoS-projects suggests some first steps toward a fully integrated pseudo-noise sensor device.

HaLoS – Integrated RF-Hardware Components for Ultra-Wideband Localization and Sensing 435

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