Radar and Remote Sensing

Various sensing products have been developed to detect objects and measure characteristics of materials remotely.

The pictures above show a hand held homodyne radar at 900 MHz, together with an X-band active radar target and a swept source for interrogating a contactless torque sensor.

This horn and Gunn source operate at 77 GHz and were used to image corrosion hidden by paint.

The concepts of teraHertz imaging are very exciting, being able to "see" where light cannot reach.

Radar transponder unit

Frozen wave RF pulse generator

Research was carried out to generate high power RF pulses at 800 MHz using an avalanche triggered "frozen wave generator". The unit requires only a high voltage dc input and a trigger source to produce short RF pulses at a repetition rate of up to 100pps.

The advantage with this device is that no bulky power amplifier is required to produce multi kW levels of RF.

Microwave front end module

Remote moisture sensing equipment

A  sensing system was developed to allow the moisture content of materials to be measured on a production line without contact and at a fast update rate. The output of the sensor was fed back to the drying equipment in a closed loop control system.

Leica laser probe test and evaluation

The probe was used with a radar system and was tested for interoperability. It is capable of producing high resolution 3D images which are then navigable. The image below was captured with the probe: