A Software Defined Radio (SDR) Approach to Radar Part 1
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- Опубликовано: 30 сен 2024
- This is an update to a previous video on a software defined radio approach to radar. In this update, we use an Analog Devices Pluto and QIQ Systems' qIQ Radar software to create and run a radar system.
The qIQ Radar software can be downloaded for free, and does not need an activation code when used with Pluto.
great job brother! what to do if we are designing monostatic radar?
Is there a gnuradio implementation of this setup available for dowhload?
Good question. Unfortunately, our support for GNU radio is not very good, at present. That is certainly a direction that we would like to pursue, but it is hard to figure out a business model that works.
Thanks! Looking forward to part 2
It is a great implementation, no doubt about it, and also a kind of niche one...That being said,, 250 USD license for a MONTH? A month?! Are you out of your mind with the pricing? Like i said, it is a niche product, but it is being distributed for general use, military wings or whatever that should be sucked dry, not common people! Do not moan when people pirate your software.
I agree, $250 for a month is kinda steep for a consumer, or hobbyist. That is why we allow qIQ Radar to be used free with the Analog Devices Pluto. A Pluto rev C can be converted into a 2 transmit, 2 receive system. That makes a nice platform for handling the SDR system. If you need help finding that video by Jon Kraft on YT, let me know and I can help you find it.
For businesses, who have already spent $6k to $8k on a digital host board, and an Analog Devices eval board, we make it possible to go month-by-month, rather than insisting on an annual license. In that case, the $250 a month for the software makes sense.
So, free for consumers, manageable license terms for businesses. I appreciate your question, so I could explain that.
Hi, I tried to download the software but the site could not find
If you had, say, twelve of these, set up 30 degrees apart in a circle, and used the software to look at each one in succession and combined the output onto one readout.... would that be a homebrew phased array radar? Sounds expensive.... but still less expensive than figuring out how to create a rapidly spinning radar dish all powered up and working.
Phased array antennas are a bunch of antennas facing the same direction. By changing the phase of the transmitted or received signal for each antenna, the beam is moved around. Your suggestion is a good one for seeing in all directions, in azimuth. It saves you from having to figure out rotary RF joints.
Thank you for the video, regarding the rf components, could you tell from where to got them?
There is a list of components, and where to purchase them, near the end of the video.
Hi tried to download software but page gave a 404 error
It should be fixed now. Sorry about that.
Thank you very much for the quick responce ,much appreciated.
If a setup like this coupled with a high gain YAGI was used.. what is the sort of range one could expect to be able to detect things at?
That's a very good question, but hard to answer. In part 3 we will discuss some improvements to the basic setup to allow it to see smaller return signals. The antennas used for this have a gain of about 13 dBi, before being put in the buckets.
@@qiqsystems Thank you for the reply Don!
Would tuning a horn rather than a bucket have a greater effect on the gain? Looking to make a 30-50 degree radar scope to do longer ranging stuff (mostly for detection of drones in the sky) and certainly would be willing to share findings. Cheers!
To make a real system, the antennas would need some work. We tried to keep the costs down when creating this system. Horns have good directivity, so I think that would be a good place to start. A dish might also work nicely.
@@qiqsystems Appreciate the reply! Will start thinking on a design. Cheers!
@@steemglobal8011 If you can, keep us posted on progress? This sounds like a good project.
As far as I know, many of the spinning radar dishes are just reflectors and the actual emitter and receiver antenna is mounted under them in the axis of rotation, aiming upwards to get reflected away horizontally. But for that, one would have to either interpose the rx/tx antenna somehow, or just use a single one switching between the functions corresponding to a timer.
Rotating Radars are typically pulsed and measure distance by time difference between transmit and receive.
FMCW Radars send out frequency modulated chirps. The return signal is mixed down with TX. The resulting beat frequency gives information about distance. Velocity is typically found out by phase difference between range bins.
Hence, FMCW implementations do not make much sense on rotating antennas but are increasingly found on MIMO arrays such as AESA or automotive Radar.