A versatile, miniaturized high Performance W-Band Radar

While for decades radars in the 94-GHz region of the electromagnetic spectrum were mainly developed for military applications, nowadays a range of other applications mainly concerning security and safety can be served by miniaturizes millimeterwave radars. The technology is considerably different from that used in the past. One terminal devices like Gunn- and IMPATT oscillators with limited bandwidth and Schottky barrier mixers with also limited noise performance were the key components in the past, while today LNAs and MPAs / HPAs exhibiting nearly full waveband performance and low noise figures are in common use. The paper describes the effort to develop an experimental, miniaturized 94-GHz radar for different applications. Specific applications mainly require a specially designed antenna, but can rely on the same radar frontend.