UT Dallas researchers have designed an affordable “electronic nose” radio-frequency front end for a rotational spectrometer — used for detecting chemical molecules in human breath for health diagnosis.
Current breath-analysis devices are bulky and too costly for commercial use, said Kenneth O, PhD, a principal investigator of the effort and director of Texas Analog Center of Excellence (TxACE). Instead, the researchers used CMOS integrated circuits technology, which promises to make the device compact and affordable.
Ref: 200-280GHz CMOS Transmitter for Rotational Spectroscopy and Demonstration in Gas Spectroscopy and Breath Analysis (PDF). IEEE Symposia on VLSI Technology and Circuits (15 June 2016)
ABSTRACT
A 200-280 GHz RF front-end of transmitter is demonstrated in 65-nm CMOS. Saturated EIRP is greater than -5dBm over a frequency range of 60GHz. When the input power is -20dBm, EIRP is greater than -10dBm for most of the frequency range, and achieves 3-dB and 6-dB bandwidths of 24% and 33%. The front-end was integrated with a fractional-N synthesizer to form a transmitter operating at 208-255GHz with EIRP of -18 to -11dBm. The transmitter and a CMOS receiver are used for rotational spectroscopy and to detect ethanol in human breath.