Progress of Six-Port technology for industrial radar applications

Six-Port receivers are well-known in the microwave test and measurement community since decades. The basic network topology has been implemented for simple reflectometer applications as well as complex network analysis. In the last decade however, a new application area for this receiver technology has been explored: Radar. Year after year new applications have been covered by radar systems taking benefit of the complex additive mixing technique of Six-Port receivers. Especially, innovative radar measurement solutions for industrial applications have been addressed by developing new hardware based on this receiver topology. In this paper, an overview of Six-Port technology will be given focusing on industrial applications that benefit from this receiver technique, the advantages as well as the drawbacks of this technology.