Millimeter wave integrated circuit radar sensors

The marriage of planar integrated circuit transceivers with thin, printed antennas is providing a new generation of low cost, producible and miniature millimeter wave transducers for demanding systems requirements. The use of integrated circuit techniques for millimeter wave transducers has now moved from a research curiosity to an engineering discipline. Microstrip is the preferred transmission media to demonstrate a wide variety of RF component functions. For applications involving precision weapon systems, a soft substrate is preferred since it provides lower cost, improved survivability, and functional versatility when compared with the traditional hard candidates such as quartz. The MESFET is rapidly emerging as a key building block for monolithic supercomponents up to a frequency of approximately 40 GHz.