SiRad Easy 300 GHz Front End Board
Contents
1 EvalKit Easy – Operation with Front End TRA_300_030 in wide-band mode
Since the EvalKit Easy is not recognizing radar front ends with wide band-operation capability a manual adaptation may become necessary.
2 Cable Connection
For the power supply to the front end a separate connection is required. The red power cable connects the 5V pin of the Front End board as shown in Figure 1 with the pin E5V of the Easy board. Figure 2 shows how to connect the cable on the front end side.
3 Software Start
To launch the software evaluation platform please follow this routine:
- connect the WebGUI
- press the black reset button on the Easy Board (compare Figure 1)
In the best case you already have some useful output if you are pointing the radar head towards a defined target, e.g. the ceiling. In the example shown in Figure 3 this obstacle/object has a distance of around 2m, an additional peak next to the DC peak (left limit of the diagram) can be caused by the operator. This situation describes the measurement result as it should look like.
But maybe you may end up with a measurement graph rather similar to the one shown in Figure 4.
In such case the radar board operation and parameter setting needs to be reviewed as described in Section 4.
4 Parameter Setting
Whatever measurement graph you receive, please continue with the following steps:
Go to RF Parameters tab
- Leave the Selector Field "Front End" unchanged at 24, 60 or 122 GHz, since it will not influence the further measurement
- Set the VCO devider to 128
- Insert a Bandwidth (MHz) of 40'000 MHz
- Set the Base frequency (MHz) to 289'000 MHz
Go to BB Processing tab
- Adjust ADC clock divider to around 1-2ms or more (please watch the DC peaks)
- Adjust Number of samples to 1024 or more
- Adjust FFT size to 1024
After you have performed all steps you should get an output similar to the one in Figure 5.
5 Return to Operation with automatic recognition of Radar Front Ends
For operation of SiRad Easy radar front ends with automatic recognition exchange the front end boards as previously used and restart operation.