A conformal/rollable monolithic miniaturized ultra-portable ground penetrating radar using additive and inkjet printing

Typical UWB FMCW Ground Penetrating (GPR) Radars operate at low frequencies that require a wide sweep bandwidth thus necessitating complex architectures and bulky broad-band antennas. This poses unique challenges to the system portability especially for manual, wide-area outdoor measurements. In this paper, we present the first design, fabrication and characterization of a complete conformal and miniaturized radar system to be rolled up in a “poster-like” container using additive printing technology. As the lumped or distributed passives, the active devices and the Rx/Tx antennas may share the same flexible substrate, the proposed radar technology is considered to be monolithic. The presented proof-of-concept system performs the most fundamental operations of the FMCW radar including signal generation, as well as the amplification and correlation of the LO and RF signals for GPR frequencies. Specifically, this paper outlines an ultra low cost system integration, packaging and experimental verification of a flexible/conformal monolithic radar system with almost identical performance for different degrees of flexing.