6 days - 3 conferences - 1 Exhibtion
1, place de la Porte de Versailles, Paris
Pavilion 7.3
Booth F195
together with TNO and Fraunhofer IAF
Pavilion 7.3
Booth F2200
together with Forschungsfabrik Mikroelektronik Germany
European Microwave Week 2019 takes place at the heart of the ville lumiere, Paris! Bringing industry and academia together, European Microwave Week 2019 is a SIX day event, including THREE cutting edge conferences and ONE exciting trade and technology exhibition featuring leading players from across the globe. EuMW 2019 provides access to the very latest products, research and initiatives in the microwave sector. It also offers you the opportunity for face-to-face interaction with those driving the future of microwave technology.
The 22nd European Microwave Week combines:
• Three Major Conferences
• Associated Workshops
• Tailored Courses and Seminars for industrialists, academics and researchers
• Leading International Trade Show.
In addition, Exhibitor Workshops and Seminars will be provided by several top organisations with superior expertise in Microwave, RF, Wireless or Radar.
The Fraunhofer FHR will be present together with the research partners TNO and Fraunhofer IAF from 01.10. to 03.10.2019 at a joint booth with the following exhibits:
Sensors in autonomous vehicles have to be extremely reliable, since in the future motorists will no longer constantly monitor traffic while underway. In the past these sensors were subjected to arduous road tests. The new ATRIUM testing device from Fraunhofer Institute for High Frequency Physics and Radar Techniques FHR now makes it possible to move a large portion of these road tests to the laboratory. ATRIUM puts on a show for the vehicle’s radar sensor, generating artificial scenery that comes very close to the actual conditions encountered in street traffic.
Here you will find further information.
GESTRA is a powerful experimental radar sensor for space observation. The Fraunhofer FHR is developing GESTRA to protect satellites in near-Earth orbit from the rapidly increasing amount of hazardous space debris. GESTRA is set up as a quasi-monostatic pulsed phased array radar, with transmitting and receiving units positioned about 100 m from each other. These units are integrated into two separate shelters, leaving them mobile for space observation as required, and can in theory be extended with different modules. Mechanical and electronic beam scanning with GESTRA allows exact and inertia-free antenna lobe alignment to the area of interest. Various innovative methods of observation, such as an optimized “Track-while-*Scan*-Mode”, or the possibility of simultaneously looking in different directions by using digital multi-lobe formations, offer unique potential for generating a data catalog of all hazardous observable objects in orbit.
The antenna is considered for the application to the Global Positioning System (GPS)/Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) and is operated at the GPS L1 band (1575 MHz). It exhibits a controlled reception pattern and is able to steer a null in the receiving pattern for anti-jamming capabilities. It has five antenna elements with different polarizations: the center element is right-handed circularly polarized and is surrounded by four linearly polarized elements. The antenna has a compact size due to miniaturized antenna elements.
Radiating slots are printed in the metallic ground plane of a thin bendable substrate. The U-shaped slots serve as directors, whereas the rectangular slot acts as the reflector. Cavities are milled in a metal plate underneath the slots. As the antenna has a low profile, the antenna can be mounted on a curved surface. The slots are fed by a microstrip line and operate in S-band at 2.44 GHz. It has a gain of 8 dBi and radiates approx. 46° away from broadside direction.
Modern MIMO-Radar for automotive applications base on MMICs technology which need complex RF feeding networks to feed a large number of antenna elements. Waveguide technology provides great flexibility and low losses for these demands. A first prototype antenna fed by a complex waveguide network was developed, fabricated and measured at the FHR. The complex feeding network shown here is the reverse from the network inside the antenna and is printed on a 3D printer. The network for the antenna consists of several layers milled out of aluminium plates.
Patch elements on the top of the substrate are connected to the metallic ground plane at the bottom of the substrate by vias and build a typical mushroom type surface. The structure exhibits a band gap in the electromagnetic spectrum in the range of 8 to 10 GHz. A possible application is the reduction of electromagnetic coupling between two closely spaced horn antennas which are used for quasi-monostatic RCS measurements.
Microstrip lines are shielded by metallic surfaces in many cases to suppress parasitic radiation from the line or to build multilayer structures. However, a parasitic parallel plate mode will propagate between the metallic shielding and the ground plane of the microstrip line as soon as it is excited at a (unsymmetrical) discontinuity. A radiating slot in the ground plane is such a defect and a non inconsiderable amount of power will couple to the parallel plate mode and will not radiate into free space. If the metallic shielding is replaced by a high impedance surface, the propagation of the parallel plate mode will be prevented in the specific frequency band gap. This kind of surface can be implemented by an EBG structure. The shielding properties will remain and the slot will radiate into one hemisphere. The EBG surface and the slot are designed for the use in X-band and work at 9.7 GHz.
The leaky wave antenna is composed of a substrate comprising a printed metallo-dielectric surface of the mushroom-type structure. A coaxial feeding line in combination with a parabolic reflector excites a parallel-plate mode propagating through the substrate. Power is radiated through the textured surface into free space. Non‑radiated power is absorbed by the same configuration (parabolic reflector, coaxial line) on the opposite side of the substrate. The main beam direction of a leaky wave antenna depends on frequency. At the lower end of the operating frequency range the conventional leaky wave antenna radiates near broadside direction. If the frequency is increased, the beam will tilt away from near broadside to end-fire direction. The textured metamaterial surface of the new leaky wave antenna allows for scanning the main beam from negative to positive angles by frequency variation without a blind spot in broadside direction.
Parallel feeding networks are widely used in array antennas to feed the antenna elements with proper power levels and phases. However, if a large number of elements is used, the network can become quite extensive. In a study it was investigated, whether a series feeding network could contribute to miniaturization by means of metamaterial lines. In order to achieve equal phases and group delay times at the four output ports of the network, metamaterial compensation lines comprising left- and right-handed unite cells branch off at the output ports of Wilkinson power dividers. To accomplish the same amount of power at the output ports, the Wilkinson power dividers are implemented with different power ratios. The network operates in the range of 9 to 11 GHz.
The compact but still high resolution MIMO radar contains 24 transmitting as well as 24 receiving antennas, resulting in an virtual array of 576 single antennas. This makes it possible for the only some 100 grams heavy sensor to deliver a reliable sight for 3D obstacle detection, even under bad visibility conditions, which is especially helpful for the usage for machine vision on autonomous robotic systems or vehicles. The whole module is only 25 cm tall and works with an operating frequency of 120 GHz.
Today, additive manufacturing is becoming increasingly important in a wide variety of production and development sectors. At the FHR, various antenna geometries can be realized for a wide variety of applications using 3D printing. In addition to simple 3D structures such as drop antennas are currently researching on antennas with special anti-reflective layers. Through these specially designed layers, the wave impedance is changed so that the reflections occurring on the antenna surface are reduced. In order to be able to manufacture such antennas without supporting material, they are embedded in lattices. In addition to antenna structures made of various plastics, it is also possible to realize waveguide structures made of metal (filters, or the like) by means of 3D printing.
Fraunhofer Institute for High Frequency Physics and Radar Techniques FHR