In a development, IISc Bangalore group designs through-the-wall Radar on a tiny chip

Indian Institute of Science (IISc) Bangalore has designed a through-the-wall radar. Headed by Gaurab Banerjee, Associate Professor at the Department of Electrical Communication Engineering, the radar has been built on a chip smaller than a grain of rice. This radar has one transmitter, three receivers, and an advanced frequency synthesiser able to generate complex radar signals, all packed together into a tiny chip. The radar has been designed using Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS) technology. Because of its small size, the mass production of the radar is also possible at a low cost. These radars can find their applications in a whole lot areas such as healthcare, defence, agriculture, and transportation.

A more complex signal named chirp is also required for the functioning of this radar. The signal needs personalised electronics such as a microwave receiver, a transmitter, and a frequency synthesiser. The design developed by the IISc team has helped them squeeze all of these electronic entities into a solo, tiny chip. To tackle specific obstacles, such as the design of a wide fractional bandwidth transceiver, the team put to use innovative architectural and circuit design techniques.

This research was funded by the IMPRINT programme of the Government of India, with additional financial contributions from the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) and the Defence Research and Development Organization (DRDO). Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL), a defence PSU, has been an active industrial partner in this IMPRINT project since its inception.

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