Antenna Technologies for Millimeter and Terahertz Sensing

Dear Colleagues,

At present, many applications in medical, environmental, and industrial fields have attracted researchers, who have proposed various sensor technologies. In particular, microwave and millimeter-wave sensors have drawn substantial attention due to their unique detecting process which can be done remotely in destructive and non-destructive aspects. Such technology offers several advantages such as compact size and sub-millimeter accuracy owing to the corresponding short wavelengths. This technology has been utilized in mmWave radars, wireless sensor networks, miniature biosensors, intelligent transport systems, THz security scanners, and in various other applications. Such unique properties are achieved due to the natural propagation properties of such frequencies and their ability to penetrate through many surfaces.

Currently, such sensor technologies face the same challenges as any advanced system, including: availability, immune-ability, maintainability, integrability, updatability, reconfigurability, sensitivity, detectability, and effective cost–mass production process. However, there are challenges associated with such technology, such as:

1. Size reduction and miniaturization for wearable and implantable portable systems;
2. Degradation of detecting function and sensing operation with long-term usage;
3. Depth limitations of waves’ penetration in different objects and materials;
4. Effects of surrounding objects on their performance when applied in integrated systems;
5. Sensors’ connectivity to the outside world through wireless communication channels;
6. Analysis process of evaluating the detecting measurements quantitatively and qualitatively;
7. Energy consumption and difficulty of sharing data to and out of the sensor device;
8. Operation limitations to certain processing conditions.

On the other hand, marginal fabrication errors could have a significant impact on the operational characteristics of such sensors. Such unprecedented challenges consequently necessitate the use of high-precision fabrication processes, which in turn leads to increased manufacturing time and hence production costs. Therefore, the challenge is to generate innovative designs which would significantly relax fabrication tolerance requirements.

For this Special Issue, we invite researchers and developers to submit their novel research papers on millimeter-wave and terahertz sensors with relevant characteristics and fabrication cost effectiveness. Nevertheless, this Issue is also extended to include research focused on the propagation at these bands as well as material characterizations for object detection and imaging. Therefore, it is preferred that manuscripts submitted for this Special Issue fall within the following topics (not an exhaustive list):

• Antenna arrays and beamforming;
• Millimeter-wave radars and transmitters;
• Terahertz and millimeter-wave antenna designs;
• Material characterization and detection;
• Manufacturing error characterization;
• Smart sensing developments and implementations;
• Sensing systems design;
• Metasurface-based antenna sensors;
• On-chip antennas;
• Antenna in package sensors;
• Wireless sensor networks;
• Sensors-based body area networks;
• EEG-based biomedical sensors;
• Integrated sensors-based human–computer interfaces;
• Smart algorithms based on neural and artificial networks;
• IoT-based sensor networks;
• Functionalized based on bulk and nanomaterials for wireless sensor devices;
• Energy harvesting technologies for self-powered sensors.

Dr. Salam Khamas
Prof. Zulkifly Abbas
Prof. Taha Elwi
Guest Editors

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