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Amsterdam RAI Exhibition and Convention Centre
Amsterdam, Netherlands
22 ¨C 25 September 2014

Millimetre Wave and Terahertz Sensors and Technology

Objectives
The conference provides a technical forum for increased awareness of enabling component technology developments, novel sensor architectures, signal and image processing, phenomenology and specific applications over the band from 10GHz to 10THz. Market awareness and user requirements are well understood in the forum and unrelenting tenacity and innovation of members is establishing the unique selling propositions of sensors in this band.

The millimetre wave band (10 GHz -300 GHz)
The millimetre wave band continues to demonstrate its capability for all-weather sensing by providing recognisable imagery in air, sea and land environments, through fog, cloud, rain and smoke. Likewise the transparency of clothing and fabric in this band is leading to demonstrators and prototypes for stand-off personnel security screening systems, canvas sided vehicle screening, full-body portal imagers, with shoe and baggage scanning variants. The forum welcomes the migration into this band of classic techniques from the microwave (radar and remote sensing) bands which are providing new schemes for target discrimination. For example, techniques such as late time response (LTR) analysis, ultra-wide band (UWB) and synthetic aperture radar (SAR), and full polarimetric active interrogation for target classification are now being implemented in the millimetre wave band. Systems are now becoming more compact through the use of emerging electronic imagers, which generate imagery using digital signal processors (DSP) linked to planar array sensors (sampling electric field phase and amplitude), as opposed to lenses and focussing mirrors coupled to focal plane arrays (sampling only intensity). These are enabling classical techniques of (optical) holography and (radio astronomy) aperture synthesis to be exploited for active and passive systems, providing the additional discriminations from phase information.

The terahertz band (300 GHz to 10 THz)
The terahertz band is attracting increased interest from military, security and medical fields due largely to the demonstration of spectral signatures for recognition (in the security and medical fields) and the generally longer range capabilities for stand-off security screening. The use of machine recognition techniques is being used increasingly to provide rapid threat recognition, privacy protection and reduced system costs. The emergence of more efficient and compact closed cycle coolers for these systems is enabling the use of cryogenic detectors for superior noise performance. This has led to a growing number high performance imager systems using (sub)mm-wave techniques and technologies from the astronomy community.

Biological and medical applications dedicated session
This year will again dedicate a session to medical and biological capabilities of the 10 GHz to 10 THz band. There have been long standing questions about the nature of the interactions between radiation in this band and biological systems at the cellular, protein, and DNA level. In the complexity of biological systems there will be mode conversions between electro-magnetic, electrostatic and acoustic waves, and relaxation and resonance phenomena that lie beneath the dominating effects of water. Questions remain about the magnitudes of these effects and what evidence there is for non-linear effects on biological systems. Given the wide frequency band, the spectrum is potentially rich in information. Speakers are invited to present recent results on the capabilities to diagnose healthy and malignant tissues, how the conditions of wounds through bandages may be assessed and the remote monitoring of the status of living systems. A range of sophisticated diagnostic architectures for this band is available, ranging from near-field microscopes, imaging systems, vector network analysers and spectrum analysers. The band provides complementary capabilities to X-ray diagnostics, as at the much longer wavelengths scattering is considerably reduced and sensors can measure directly electric fields of probing waves. The potential therefore exists for novel types of three-dimensional tomographic reconstructions.

Broad application areas
Papers are solicited in the following broad areas of component technologies, sensors and applications:

component technology: receivers, amplifiers, detectors, heterodyne mixers, sources, transmission lines and the associated packaging
enabling technology: MEMS, nanostructure and nanotechnology, photonic and optoelectronic technologies, metamaterials
modelling, simulation and phenomenology
imaging systems
aircraft landing in poor/no visibility and ground taxiing
concealed weapons and contraband detection
handheld, portal and stand-off screening systems
adverse weather intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance imaging
biomedical imaging
driving/navigation on land and sea
image and signal processing
resolution enhancement/super-resolution
spectroscopy and signatures
non-imaging military applications
ballistic missile (launch)/warhead detection/tracking
standoff millimetre wave threat warning systems
millimetre wave radar
civil/commercial remote sensing
oil spill detection/tracking
Earth observation
natural disaster assessment

spie.org/ESD/conferencedetails/millimetre-wave-and-terahertz-sensors-and-technology