Is it really "heating" used for beam scanning in Echodyne's radar?

Status
Not open for further replies.

Georgy.Moshkin

Full Member level 5
Joined
Oct 9, 2017
Messages
270
Helped
44
Reputation
88
Reaction score
39
Trophy points
28
Activity points
2,507
Is it really heating or just a misinterpretation?

reference:

https://techxplore.com/news/2016-11-echodyne-metamaterials-drone-sized-radar.html
 

"...Echodyne, a Seattle-area startup backed by investors that include Bill Gates and Paul Allen, announced that it was working on a new type of radar about the size of a cellphone with performance that’s much more like the fancy phased-array radars that the military uses while costing a tenth as much or less..."

Always I had doubts in getting good REAL performances of metamaterial antennas, but these guys looks they found one good milking cow...or more
 

radar array is made of multiple layers of carefully patterned copper wiring, and beam control results from heating specific areas of the wiring...
Click to expand...

Searched for "heater phase shifter" and found some papers, for example: https://orbit.dtu.dk/files/4359773/Pu.pdf
The tuning operations of our devices are performed by electrical current through integrated heaters, instead of optical power adopted in [8]. This would be a much more practical implementation of such a phase shifter in real applications
Click to expand...

Interesting if something similar could be done on a substrate with large Er(t) dependency. Some current may be applied to thin high impedance lines and provide some phase shift.
 

It looks like a multi element phased array, where the elements are spaced out electrically with different time delays. As you sweep the frequency, each time delay imparts a different phase shift, so you can scan the antenna from left to right.

It is a very old concept, radars in the 1950's used this, albeit with metal waveguides providing the time delay elements.
 

Status
Not open for further replies.

Similar threads

Menu
Log in
Register
Cookies are required to use this site. You must accept them to continue using the site. Learn more…