Radar Software

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1 General Information

We offer different free software packages to our customers to try out our SiRad Easy® and SiRad Simple® evaluation kits and speed up custom sensor development. First, we offer a free reference firmware implementation and signal processing library. The firmware is written in embedded C and comes pre-flashed on our evaluation kits. Second, our browser-based WebGUI can connect to our evaluation kits and reference firmware to visualize live radar data. The GUI is written in HTML and JavaScript. Third, we also offer configuration scripts and examples to work with Octave / MATLAB and other third party software. The mentioned software packages are available from our download area for our evaluation kit customers.

2 Evaluation Kit Firmware

The signal processing of our SiRad Easy® and SiRad Simple® evaluation kits is completely embedded in the microcontroller mounted on the kits. No further signal processing calculations are done in the WebGUI other than needed for displaying the data. You can find more information about the practical use of the firmware in the Evalkits section. This includes guidelines to tune the firmware to your application for update rate, resolution, and accuracy.

Embedded C firmware modules overview

The reference firmware implementation and signal processing library are available in our download area for our EvalKit customers. The open firmware parts include drivers for front end control, baseband, PLL, and data interfaces (control lines, UART, WiFi). The library includes the signal processing functions that can be tried out with our evaluation kits. The reference firmware implementation and signal processing library can be used as a start point for sensor developments by our EvalKit customers.

3 Evaluation Kit GUI

With the single-channel evaluation kits SiRad Easy® and SiRad Simple®, we provide our free and customizable WebGUI which is a browser-based GUI (for Microsoft Windows®), also see the picture below. From the WebGUI, you can visualize the radar data, change radar parameters such as base frequency, bandwidth, number of ramps, sampling frequency, FFT size, and more on the fly in the running system. Radar settings can be saved and re-used, up to 16 targets can be detected and are displayed in the WebGUI. For more information, also please visit Evalkits#WebGUI

WebGUI: browser based graphical user interface

The Silicon Radar WebGUI consists of four main panels

  • control panel on the left side for changing radar parameters,
  • main menu on the top of the screen to change view modes with the active view in orange,
  • scene/canvas itself where the sensor data is displayed,
  • target list with the status fields on the right side of the screen (draggable).

Processing Parameters

  • Sampling frequency
  • Number of samples
  • Number of ramps
  • Downsampling
  • FFT size
  • FIR Filter