SiRad Easy 300 GHz Front End Board
Contents
EvalKit Easy – Operation of Front End TRX_300_xxx in wide-band modus
Since the EvalKit Easy is not recognizing radar front ends beyond with an wb-operation frequency of 300 GHz a manual adaptation may become necessary.
I. Cable Connection
The red power cable of the front end can be connected on the Easy E5V connector as shown in Fig.1:
<Fig.1>
Fig. 1: EvalKit Easy with 300GHz Front End
II. Software Start
To launch the software evaluation platform please follow this routine:
- connect the WebGUI - press the black reset button on the Easy
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 Fig. 2 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.
<Fig.2>
Fig. 2: Graph of a radar measurement with one obstacle in 2m distance as it should look like.
But maybe you may end up with a measurement graph rather similar to the one shown in Fig. 3.
<Fig.3>
Fig. 3: Resulting graph of a radar measurement, if operation conditions are not properly chosen.
In such case the radar board operation and parameter setting needs to be reviewed as described in Section III.
III. Parameter Setting
Whatever measurement graph you receive, please continue with the following steps:
- Go to RFE Parameters tab - Adjust the base frequency to higher frequencies until you have a reasonable output like in the second picture with only a small DC peak (for me it was 320’000 MHz) - Adjust bandwidth to higher bandwidth, for example, 20’000 MHz - Go to BB Processing tab - Adjust number of samples to 1024 or more - Adjust FFT size to 1024 - Adjust ADC clock divider to something around 1-2ms (please watch the DC peaks)
After you have performed all steps you should get an output similar to the one in Fig. 4.
<Fig.4>
Fig. 4: Radar Measurement following the parameter setting, still targeting an object in a distance of 2 meters.
IV. Return to Operation with automatic recognition of Radar Front Ends
A return to radar front ends with automatic recognition is achieved with the re-change of the front end boards previously used.
