Jan 21 2011
Researchers at Oslo University have built a CMOS impulse radar transceiver ideal for various applications like industrial automation, personal safety and monitoring of human-significant signs.
The CMOS radar transceiver features a single chip. When linked to a proper antenna, the chip will concurrently transmit ultra-short electromagnetic pulses, sample the backscattered waves and save it as a series of distinct samples. This results in successfully determining the reflected energy from entities found in the surroundings.
Reflection from entities at the back of an obstacle can also be identified due to the penetrating characteristics of radio waves as well as the ultra-high sensitivity of the receivers.
The duration of the pulses generated by the radar chip are ideally less than a nanosecond and in the frequency domain, their bandwidth extends over several GHz. Since penetration properties vary between materials, the ideal bandwidth for a particular application relies on the stuff to be penetrated. The bandwidths provided by Novelda are in the range between 1 and 10GHz.
The engineers have reported that the device can be easily included in small mobile sets. Development kits and software for the impulse radar chip are offered by Novelda, enabling developers to save money and time in developing archetypes and concepts. The kit features an I/O module and a RF board, linked via pin header connectors. If required, the RF board alone can be utilized as a plug-in to prevailing archetype systems.