Sensing and communication capabilities of the MTS ( Fig. 1) over both near-field and far-field ranges is an essential advantage of the proposed technology. Indeed, currently two different technologies would be necessary for near-field sensing (i.e. capacitive sensing or air-flux based detection) and for far field sensing and communication (radar and antenna arrays).
The project is organized around the following Work Packages:
1) Management
2) Sparse MTSs (reducing the number of electronic components)
3) Curved MTSs, to conform to the shape of a robot or a human
4) Integration with electronic components
5) Flexible Radio Frequency materials, based on polymers
6) Dissemination
The first deliverables concerned a number of tools for management and dissemination. An Interface Control Document (ICD) organizes the cooperation between WPs. That has been followed immediately by an exploitation plan, where the different existing solutions for near-field sensing devoted to robotics have been described and where exploitation is outlined. More recently, 3 more deliverables have been provided, regarding sparse MTSs, integration with RF correlator modules and initial design of low-loss RF polymers. Based on the exploitation plan, it has been decided to shift up the frequency from 10 GHz to 24 GHz.
The present report describes the results achieved in all WPs. In a nutshell, WP1 is management and follow-up of the project, WP2 describes the feeding of the MTS and a technique to make it sparse, which should facilitate its integration with the electronics (cf. WP4). WP3 provides modeling and results for propagation along curved MTS (extension of WP2). WP4 describes a MTS-electronics co-design methodology, based on equivalent-circuits, a first correlation experiment with a MTS (designed under WP2) validated through a direction-finding experiment, as well as analysis of thermal aspects (incl. measurements). WP5 paves the way toward the use of flexible substrates, with progress toward low-loss polymers and characterization techniques of materials, indispensable for the high-frequency MTSs foreseen in WP2. WP6 deals with communication, dissemination and exploitation of FITNESS results.
