MTTS Outstanding Young Professional Lecture : Arya Menon
Rising threats of terrorism and contraband smuggling have intensified interest in high-frequency security sensors. This talk presents a non-invasive approach to extract the complex permittivity and thickness of concealed or embedded dielectrics using multi-mode (active–passive) microwave sensing. Two K-band (18–26 GHz) sensors are discussed—an active radar and a passive radiometer. Performance challenges arising from RF front-end imperfections and background clutter are addressed through calibration techniques that (i) correct RF distortion in frequency-modulated continuous-wave radars, (ii) compensate mismatch and temperature-dependent insertion loss in radiometers, and (iii) mitigate background noise in indoor conditions. Electromagnetic models are developed to predict radar and radiometric responses of multilayer dielectric targets and experimentally verified using dielectric stacks backed by a simplified human phantom. These models enable material characterization with about 5% accuracy. Although demonstrated for security sensing, the techniques extend to remote sensing, subsurface fire detection, and food safety applications.
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- 800 W Campbell Rd
- Richardson, Texas
- United States 75080-3021
- Room Number: ECSS 2.306
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Arya
Multi-mode (radar-radiometer) Sensing for Security Applications: Improved Characterization of Hidden Dielectric Layers
Arya Menon is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Texas A&M University (TAMU). She earned her Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Oregon State University (2021). She completed her postdoctoral fellowship at TAMU in 2023. Dr. Menon’s research explores bio-inspired intelligence in radar systems, with focus areas in hardware–software co-design for cognitive radars, development of sharable wireless datasets, and radar-based sensor fusion. Her broader interests include radiometer design, sensor calibration, and dielectric characterization. She has received several prestigious recognitions, including the 2025 IEEE MTT-S Outstanding YP Lecturer Award, selection as a 2022 DARPA Riser for her work on “Bioinspired Hardware–Software Co-Design for Intelligent High-Frequency Active Sensors,” the 2020 ARFTG Roger Pollard Student Fellowship (Silver), and the 2019 IEEE MTT-S Graduate Fellowship. As an educator, she was honored with the 2018 Provost’s Award for Outstanding Teaching in STEM at the University of South Florida for developing innovative electromagnetics lab
experiments.