An Electro-optic Near-field and Thermal Imaging System for Microwave and MM-wave Integrated Circuits and Antennas

"The objective of this Phase II Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) project is to develop a compact, portable electro-optic electromagnetic/thermal imaging system. The proposed EM/thermal imaging system can be directly utilized for thecharacterization of various RF structures such as complex integrated circuits and large-scale antenna arrays. The compact EM/thermal imaging system can provide comprehensive understanding of complicated electrical and thermal behaviors of RF structureswith spatial resolution smaller than 10 microns and measurement bandwidth over 100 GHz. Also, the compact EM/thermal imaging instrument can be directly utilized from the early development stage to the final evaluation stage of various RF components andsystems for the military and commercial applications. Based on the successful development of the prototype model during the Phase I, a turn-key compact EM/thermal instrument will be developed during the Phase II of this STTR project that will have directimpact on a variety of scientific researches as well as industrial applications. The proposed compact EM/thermal imaging system can be used for a number of fundamental research areas where the understanding of the high-resolution EM near-fields,temperature distributions and their interactive behaviors are crucial. For the industrial applications, the comprehensive EM/thermal information of various RF components and systems obtained by the compact EM/thermal imaging instrument can be fed back tothe design processes, which can lead to a significant reduction in the development time and cost of those RF structures. Also, the compact EM/thermal imager can be used for the performance validation and fault isolations during the final production stagesof various RF structures."