Semiconductor IP News and Trends Blog

mmWave Technology Moves beyond Airport Scanners

Imec’s millimeter-wave technology promises new application in motion sensing.

Many of us first learned about millimeter (mm) wave technology while passing through the relatively newer scanning machines at most US airports. This technology was originally thought to replace the older X-ray machine scanners. With mmWave’s, the radiation energy passes through clothing but bounces off the person’s skin before returning to the receivers. An image of the energy pattern is then available for viewing by airport TSA personel.

But this technology has other uses such as in motion detection. What follows is an interview with Imec – the leading nanoelectronics lab in Belgium – about the evolving uses of mmWave technology.

Imec\’s mm Wave Motion Sensing Technology

Interview Transcript:

Blyler: This is John Blyler. I’m the Chief Content Officer at Extension Media. Today I’m at the beautiful Imec campus in Leuven, Belgium. I have the pleasure of talking to Liesbet Van der Perre. What is your title?

Perre: I’m the Wireless Program Director here at Imec and I’m also a part-time professor at the University of Leuven.

Blyler: Smart gal! I have a few simple questions for you. You’ve talked about many things, but one in particular was millimeter (mm) wave sensing technology at 79 GHz. Why is that becoming important?

Perre: We think that it’s a great technology for motion sensing and also for doing a lot of safety and other systems. It opens new applications because of the high frequency of mm waves allows very good resolution and high precision. There are lots of applications that could use this kind of precision. Also, mm wave technology could be used in application that won’t work for cameras because (of a lack of) visible light, for example, going through fog and other circumstances such as in darkness. We think motion sensing at high precision could be a very good technology.

60GHz receiver module for mm-wave radios. Such radios enable Gbit/s communication at short range e.g. to exchange wirelessly (multimedia) content. (Courtesy Imec)

Blyler: I remember cars using infrared technology to spot moving objects in front of them. Will mm wave have similar applications in automotive?

Perre: I think it could be complementary to this. For example, in the car situation or transport system, you could do detection of pedestrians. It can really help in avoiding lots of accidents where people are involved. For those situations where infrared can not work, radio waves are just a bit more versatile. It (radio wave technology) could help a lot.

Blyler: Some of the challenges must be things like power consumption and perhaps cost.

Perre. Yes, definitely. Of course, that is the major thing to solve. The fact that today we can try to do this in pure, vanilla digital CMOS really helps. We are trying to work on solutions that can be done in CMOS. If we can scale it with large volumes, then that will help to reduce the cost and power. That will make the technology accessible to lots of people and applications.

Blyler: Fascinating. Very interesting. One of the things we had talked about at the dinner last night was the interconnect issue. Apparently, this (mm wave technology) works best if it is near the antenna. That brings up issues of maybe 3D stacking that is eventually coming.

Perre: One of the challenges we have with mm wave is that the losses on interconnects and on wires are very high. So you need to get everything as close to each other as possible. On the other hand, the good thing is that the antennas at these very high (77-79 GHz) frequencies can be made very, very small. So you can really think of a system where the antenna and the chip are very highly integrated in a 3D fashion or maybe integrating chips with antennas on top of the chips. We are exploring lots of these options. We believe It will be a nice systems.

Blyler: Thank you for taking the time (to talk).

Perre: Thank you.

Originally published on Chipestimate’s “IP Insider“