A radar-based breast cancer detection system using CMOS integrated circuits

Abstract

An ultrawideband (UWB) radar-based breast cancer detection system, which is composed of complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor integrated circuits, is presented. This system includes Gaussian monocycle pulse (GMP) generation circuits, switching (SW) matrix circuits, equivalent-time sampling circuits, and a compact UWB antenna array. During the detection process, the GMP signal with the center frequency of 6 GHz is first generated and transmitted with a repetition frequency of 100 MHz. The GMP signal is sent to a selected transmitter antenna by the SW matrix module, and the reflected signal is captured by the receiver antennas. Next, the high-speed equivalent-time sampling circuits are employed to retrieve the reflected GMP signal. A confocal algorithm is used to reconstruct the breast image. The total size for the prototype module is $45~\textrm {cm} \times 30~\textrm {cm} \times 14.5$ cm in length, width, and height, respectively, which is dramatically smaller than the conventional detection systems. Using our proposed system, we demonstrate a successful detection of 1-cm cancer target in the breast phantom.