Feasibility study and design of a low-cost system-on-a-chip microwave radiometer on silicon

A detailed system analysis of a novel low-cost system-on-a-chip (SoaC) passive microwave radiometer on silicon for civil and environmental safeguard applications is presented. Particularly, this paper focuses the opportunities offered by the latest advances silicon technology for realizing innovative integrated radiometer for temperature remote sensing and its application to the forest fire prevention. An accurate feasibility study of a SoaC radiometer on a standard CMOS process for the 13 GHz frequency range is reported. The potential of such a low-cost solution has been confirmed by the system analysis carried out by means of Ptolemy simulations.