Low-Cost SDR-Based RF Transceiver for Microwave Breast Screening

Software-defined radio (SDR) transceivers have been of great interest in amateur radio in recent years due to their low cost, small form factor, and ease of development for different applications. Simultaneously, the transceiver has been an important part of any microwave breast cancer screening system, which usually comes in a bulky, expensive, and inefficient package and is often overlooked. This paper presents a low-cost RF transceiver based on SDR for microwave breast screening in the frequency band of 2–4 GHz. The transceiver is paired with a flexible antenna array, a switching matrix, and the needed RF components to form a complete breast screening system. The results are verified using a commercial vector network analyzer, revealing that SDR shows promise as an affordable transceiver solution for microwave breast monitoring devices.