Feasibility study of a low-cost system-on-a-chip UWB pulse radar on silicon for the heart monitoring

In February 2002 the FCC authorized the marketing of a new class of radiofrequency devices: the ultra-wide-band (UWB) systems. One of the most interesting applications for which the UWB systems are addressed is related to the medical imaging. This paper addresses the feasibility study of a novel fully integrated 3.1-10.6 GHz UWB radar on a standard silicon technology for the heart wall monitoring. A theoretical frequency-dependent model of the losses of the electromagnetic radiation in the channel (the human chest) in which the radar operates has been derived. The preliminary specifications of each building blocks have been derived by basic theory in the conditions of the addressed scenario. System simulations have been carried out by means of the Ptolemy simulator within Agilent ADS2005A
^TM
in order to claim the preliminary theoretical study. The CAD analyses have shown that the correlator-based radar topology allows us to approach the realization of such a system-on-a-chip pulse radar in a modern silicon technology (as such as the standard CMOS 90 nm).