Digital Ultra-Wideband-Sensor Electronics integrated in SiGe-Technology

Ultra-Wideband (UWB) sensors are of great interest for a vast number of different applications. Due to their bandwidth they provide a great deal of information about the objects under test compared to classical narrow band sensors. This improves the reliability of the measurement results and opens up new fields of application for electrical sensors. New UWB-electronics are introduced which provide the opportunity for large volume application of such sensors. Its bandwidth ranges from nearly zero to 5 GHz. The RF interface comprises of integrated digital circuits in SiGe technology. A Maximum Length Binary Sequence (MLBS) is used as transmit signal. At the receiver, fast track-and-hold and interleaved sampling is applied for data recording. The received signal is processed by a DSP. Excellent timing stability, low power consumption and miniature size support synchronous multi-channel operation which is a prerequisite to build sensor arrays.