Detecting Battery Cells with Harmonic Radar

Harmonic radar systems have been shown to be an effective method for detecting the presence of electronic devices, even if the devices are powered off. Prior work has focused on detecting specific non-linear electrical components (such as transistors and diodes) that are present in any electronic device. In this paper we show that harmonic radar is also capable of detecting the presence of batteries. We tested a proof-of-concept system on Alkaline, NiMH, Li-ion, and Li-metal batteries. With the exception of Li-metal coin cells, the prototype harmonic radar detected the presence of batteries in our experiments with 100% accuracy.