A flexible UWB Transmitter for breast cancer detection imaging systems

This paper presents a flexible architecture for an integrated Ultra-Wideband (UWB) Transmitter capable of generating pulses suited for breast cancer detection imaging systems. A flexible design allows the generation of a large variety of UWB signals fully compatible with the ones used in real experiments in recent state-of-the-art. Flexibility and high degree of programmability of the mixed-signal system allow also to compensate for non-ideal effects of building blocks through a digital calibration. It is also shown how not only internal non-idealities are accounted for but also how channel and antenna responses can be compensated for through a digital pre-emphasis of UWB pulses. The circuit is designed on a 130 nm CMOS technology and simulated at transistor-level. Simulations showed 2% maximum NRMSE pulse error with respect to ideal Gaussian and Modulated and Modified Hermite Polynomial (MMHP) Matlab templates.