Francesco Barbon

Promise of a Better Position

Industrial automation today is an essential technology underlying our modern society. Advanced positioning and sensor feedback tasks in automation processes often require distance displacement detection, e.g., to measure and track the movement of robots. Furthermore, the detection of mechanical stress in complex industrial machinery through an accurate vibration analysis is often a task of major interest. Therefore, high-resolution distance measurements with short- and long-range positioning are important for a large number of sensing applications and can also be used as a precondition for vibrometer applications. Several automation technologies rely on high precision positioning sensors to track linear as well as rotational movements of various machinery.

Six-Port Radar Sensor for Remote Respiration Rate and Heartbeat Vital-Sign Monitoring

A novel remote respiration and heartbeat monitoring sensor is presented. The device is a monostatic radar based on a six-port interferometer operating a continuous-wave signal at 24 GHz and a radiated power of less than 3

A six-port interferometer based micrometer-accuracy displacement and vibration measurement radar

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Six-Port Technology for Traffic Safety

. Minor mechanical movements of the patients body caused by the respiration as well as hearbeat can be tracked by analyzing the phase modulation of the backscattered signal by means of microwave interferometry with the six-port network. High-distance measurement accuracy in the micrometer scale as well as low system complexity are the benefits of the six-port receiver. To verify the performance of the system, different body areas have been observed by the six-port radar. The proposed system has been tested and validated by measurement results.

Dual tone approach for unambiguous six-port based interferometric distance measurements

Displacement detection and vibration measurements are important requirements for automation and mechanical stress diagnosis in diverse industrial environments. Laser interferometry is a widely used technique for these kinds of measurements since it features high-resolution, wide dynamic range and wide frequency response. Another advantage of the laser interferometry technique is contactless diagnosis/sensing which allows remote operations. However this technique is not suitable in harsh environments for instance with the presence of dust or fog which occur in several industrial production sites. In this paper a new contactless radar based vibration measurement technique is presented. It features an RF frontend based on a passive six-port interferometer working at 24 GHz. A dedicated signal processing unit is also presented. The proposed hardware allows to measure with a position accuracy of 0.5 µm.

A 77 GHz direction of arrival detector system with SiGe integrated six-port receiver

The market for driver-assistance systems for modern automobiles is rapidly growing. Formerly only provided for the luxury automotive market, these systems are nowadays more and more available for mid- and compact-class vehicles as well. This development is not only limited to the passenger car segment but is also more and more important for commercial vehicles and trucks. Some driving assistance systems have already become mandatory, e.g., the antilock breaking system (ABS). Some governments are currently thinking about requiring automatic distance control by law for heavy trucks. Automatic distance control in combination with an automatic emergency breaking system is one of the rising stars for enhancing traffic safety. Radar- based distance control mostly interacts with cruise control systems and it adapts the speed of the drivers car to the distance to the car or obstacle in front of the vehicle. Furthermore, unavoidable accidents are detected and actions for reducing the effects of the crash are automatically initiated for some systems.

Signal processing strategies for six-port based Direction of Arrival detector systems

This publication shows an approach for absolute, unambiguous distance measurements with a Six-Port radar at 24 GHz. Such an interferometric radar has the drawback of ambiguity problem concerning phase, limiting the measuring distance to half of the used wavelength. This can be solved with the presented dual tone system using the resulting beat frequency between two tones to determine an absolute position within even several wavelengths. In the following, this system will be presented along with simulations and measurements proving the concept.

A compact, versatile six-port radar module for industrial and medical applications

In this publication the design of a 77 GHz Direction-Of-Arrival (DOA) detector system with an Integrated SiGe six-port receiver and a passive microstrip antenna network is presented. The introduction of the six-port receiver for industrial sensors and automotive radar applications has opened a whole new set of possibilities and implementations. A typical problem though of Millimeter-Wave (MW) integration is the interface between the on-chip circuitry and the off-chip system electronics or passives. The antenna design aspects and interconnections are presented with a layouting analysis as well as a system overview of the DOA detector for a flexible, low-complexity and low-cost solution in microstrip technology.

A wide-range 77 GHz Direction of Arrival detector with integrated dual six-port receiver

Direction of Arrival (DOA) detection for industrial positioning is a relevant topic. Several applications make use of the six-port technology to perform phase difference based DOA measurements. The six-port receiver offers high accuracy, robustness and a low cost solution. The ability of this device to precisely measure a phase difference (hence a DOA angle) implies a correct acquisition of the signals delivered from the six-port detector as well as a correct digital signal processing. In this paper a dedicated acquisition platform for the six-port DOA detector is presented. Moreover, different software strategies to compute the DOA angle have been evaluated for an FPGA. Different types of algorithms have been implemented and compared using accuracy and throughput as references.

A microwave interferometer based contactless quasi-TEM waveguide position encoder with micrometer accuracy

The Six-port receiver has been intensively investigated in the last decade to be implemented as an alternative radar architecture. Plenty of current scientific publications demonstrate the effectiveness and versatility of the Six-port radar for special industrial, automotive, and medical applications, ranging from accurate contactless vibration analysis, through automotive radar calibration, to remote breath and heartbeat monitoring. Its highlights, such as excellent phase discrimination, trivial signal processing, low circuit complexity, and cost, have lately drawn the attention of companies working with radar technology. A joint project involving the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg and InnoSenT GmbH (Innovative Sensor Technology) led to the development of a highly accurate, compact, and versatile Six-port radarmodule aiming at a reliable high-integration of all subcomponents such as antenna, Six-port front-end, baseband circuitry, and digital signal processing in one single package. Innovative aspects in the RF front-end design as well as in the integration strategy are hereby presented, together with a system overview and measurement results.