scholarly journals Design of a Low-Cost Ultra-Wide-Band Radar Platform

Sensors ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (10) ◽  
pp. 2867
Author(s):  
Marko Malajner ◽  
Danijel Šipoš ◽  
Dušan Gleich
Keyword(s):  
Power Supply ◽  
Software Defined Radio ◽  
Pulse Generator ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
Wide Band ◽  
Negative Power ◽  
Analog To Digital ◽  
Sample Rate ◽  
Improved Design ◽  
Strobe Pulse

This paper proposes an improved design of a pulse-based radar. An improved design of a pulse generator is presented using step recovery diodes and a signal mixer for the received signal. Two-step recovery diodes produce pulses of 120 ps in duration. A pulse generator is improved by removing the negative power supply, resulting in a reduced number of electronic pulses. A sampling mixer at the receiver’s site receives the generated signal and stretches it from picoseconds into microseconds. The improved pulse generator is also used in the sampling mixer as a strobe pulse generator, which makes the sampling mixer much simpler. The stretched signal is then sampled by a low sample rate using an analog to digital converter. The proposed radar design achieves up to 8 GHz bandwidth and an equivalent receiving sample rate of about 100 GSa/s. The radar is controlled using a software-defined radio called Red Pitaya, which is also used for data acquisition. The proposed radar design uses widely available commercial components, which makes radar design widely available with low cost implementation.

scholarly journals A single power supply 0.1-3.5 GHz low noise amplifier design using a low cost 0.5 μm d-mode pHEMT process

2020 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 317-326
Author(s):  
Denis Sotskov ◽  
Vadim Elesin ◽  
Alexander Kuznetsov ◽  
Nikolay Usachev ◽  
Nikita Zhidkov ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Power Supply ◽  
Noise Figure ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
Wide Band ◽  
Low Noise ◽  
Low Noise Amplifier ◽  
Operating Frequency Range ◽  
Amplifier Design ◽  
Noise Amplifier ◽  
Single Power

Design and testing results of a single power supply wide-band low noise amplifier (LNA) based on low cost 0.5 ?m D-mode pHEMT process are presented. It is shown that the designed cascode LNA has operating frequency range up to 3.5 GHz, power gain above 15 dB, noise figure below 2.2 dB, output linearity above 17 dBm and power consumption less than 325 mW. Potential immunity of the LNA to total ionizing dose and destructive single event effects exceed 300 krad and 60 MeV?cm2/mg respectively.

scholarly journals Design approach for wideband FM receiver using RTL-SDR and raspberry PI

2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (2.31) ◽  
pp. 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
P Satya Narayana ◽  
M N.V.S. Syam Kumar ◽  
A Keerthi Kishan ◽  
K V.R.K. Suraj
Keyword(s):  
Communication System ◽  
Software Defined Radio ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
Wide Band ◽  
Cost Effective ◽  
Raspberry Pi ◽  
Processing Unit ◽  
Capture Process ◽  
Band Frequency ◽  
Wide Range

Software defined radio replaced majority of hardware modules like mixers, filters, modulators and demodulators etc., with Software blocks in the field of radio electronics and communication. In this some or all the functionalities are Configurable using this software implemented on technologies like FPGAs, DSPs etc. Owing to lack of ease in implementing and reconfiguring huge hardware modules, we move on to implement an adaptable communication system with the help of SDR, as it can be easily configured to work with wide range of frequencies. We find various SDR transceiver modules which can be interfaced with digital computer and aided with firmware like GNU radio, SDR shark, etc., allowing us to construct blocks with the help of built in components that decode and process the received data and produce required output. In requirement of implementing a cost-effective, compact sized and portable system, we use a processing unit providing enough computational power to perform signal processing tasks which is Raspberry pi. Here we are going to implement a low cost SDR communication system that capture, process and visualize the Wide Band Frequency signal. 

Contradiction Analysis and Solution in the R&D of High-Power Solar LED Street Lamp Controller

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 12-19
Author(s):  
Zhengwang Xu ◽  
Wei Mei ◽  
Jiaqi Yu ◽  
Jiarui Zhang ◽  
Yuchun Yi ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Power Supply ◽  
High Efficiency ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
Solar Panel ◽  
Battery Voltage ◽  
Supply Circuit ◽  
Led Light ◽  
Power Supply Circuit ◽  
Side Mode ◽  
Dual Power

As being restricted by factors such as cost, efficiency and size, the development of high-power solar LED street light controller is faced with plenty of difficulties. In case that a structure of two independent DC/DC is applied as the main circuit, it has to face problems such as large size and high cost; in case of applying the bidirectional BUCK/BOOST circuit, it requires change-over switches to control the solar panel and LED light. As being restricted by withstanding voltage, on-resistance and cost, a PMOS device cannot be used as the change-over switch of solar panel and LED light. However, when being used as a change-over switch, an NMOS device must apply the low-side mode under which the negative ends of the mentioned three parts are cut off. In the condition of applying the low-side mode, a differential circuit must be used to detect the voltage of the solar panel. Furthermore, in order to make sure batteries can still be regularly charged after wearing out in daylight, the controller must be supplied with power through a dual power supply circuit that can obtain power from both the solar panel and the battery. The demander has a requirement on extremely low standby power consumption of the product, and thus it is necessary to minimize the circuit that is live while working in standby mode. Methods: The bidirectional BUCK/BOOST circuit structure is applied to the main circuit to realize a higher change-over efficiency while giving considerations to both cost and size. The NMOS device, model IRFB4410ZPBF, with a price of about three yuan, is used as the switching device, and the low-side mode is applied, that is the switches inserted in between negative end of the solar panel or LED light and that of the DC/DC circuit. The low-cost rail-to-rail operational amplifier LM358 is used to form a differential amplification circuit for detecting the voltage of the solar panel. A XL1509-12E1 chip that only costs 0.88 yuan/pc is selected as the main change-over chip for the power supply, which has realized the highly-efficient and low-cost change-over of the power supply. A dual power supply circuit and a step-down protective circuit are designed for the XL1509-12E1 change-over chip. By comparing solar panel voltage with battery voltage, the solar panel booting circuit is realized. Only when solar panel voltage is higher than battery voltage, does the system program start to power it up for running, so that the outage of most of the circuits of the system under standby mode does not consume energy. Furthermore, the solar panel voltage detecting circuit, the solar panel booting circuit and several return difference functions are corrected during system debugging. Results: The circuit board of the entire controller features small size, low cost and high efficiency. It measures about 100*62*18mm in size, costs about 60 yuan, and the charge/discharge change-over efficiency reaches up to over 95%. The controller has many functions: it is capable of operating within a large scope, in which, solar panel voltage is subject to 15~50V, LED light voltage is subject to 15~60V, battery voltage is subject to 10~35V and battery-end charge/discharge current is 10A; it is capable of adapting to monocrystalline silicon/multicrystalline silicon/thin-film and many other kinds of solar panels, as well as lithium/lead-acid and many other kinds of batteries; it is capable of detecting the conversion of day and night, automatically controlling charging and discharging and automatically making adaptive adjustment according to seasonal variations; the current to be consumed during standby will be maintained below 3mA, and thus the power consumption is extremely low. Conclusion: By selecting the bidirectional BUCK/BOOST circuit structure, applying low-side mode for switching of solar panel and LED light, using a differential circuit to detect solar panel voltage, using a low-cost DC/DC chip to realize power supply change-over, designing a dual power supply circuit, introducing solar panel booting circuit and other hardware design, as well as MPPT algorithm, state recognition and control, return difference control and other software design, a solar LED street light control product featuring small size, low cost, high efficiency and multiple functions is successfully developed.

scholarly journals Electro-smog monitoring using low-cost software-defined radio dongles

IEEE Access ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-1
Author(s):  
Yassine Ben-Aboud ◽  
Mounir Ghogho ◽  
Sofie Pollin ◽  
Abdellatif Kobbane.
Keyword(s):  
Software Defined Radio ◽  
Low Cost

scholarly journals A Local Oscillator Phase Compensation Technique for Ultra-Wideband Stepped-Frequency Continuous Wave Radar Based on a Low-Cost Software-Defined Radio

Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 780
Author(s):  
Kazunori Takahashi ◽  
Takashi Miwa
Keyword(s):  
Software Defined Radio ◽  
Initial Phase ◽  
Continuous Wave ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
Local Oscillator ◽  
The Other ◽  
Ultra Wideband ◽  
Single Frequency ◽  
Wave Radar ◽  
Stepped Frequency

The paper discusses a way to configure a stepped-frequency continuous wave (SFCW) radar using a low-cost software-defined radio (SDR). The most of high-end SDRs offer multiple transmitter (TX) and receiver (RX) channels, one of which can be used as the reference channel for compensating the initial phases of TX and RX local oscillator (LO) signals. It is same as how commercial vector network analyzers (VNAs) compensate for the LO initial phase. These SDRs can thus acquire phase-coherent in-phase and quadrature (I/Q) data without additional components and an SFCW radar can be easily configured. On the other hand, low-cost SDRs typically have only one transmitter and receiver. Therefore, the LO initial phase has to be compensated and the phases of the received I/Q signals have to be retrieved, preferably without employing an additional receiver and components to retain the system low-cost and simple. The present paper illustrates that the difference between the phases of TX and RX LO signals varies when the LO frequency is changed because of the timing of the commencement of the mixing. The paper then proposes a technique to compensate for the LO initial phases using the internal RF loopback of the transceiver chip and to reconstruct a pulse, which requires two streaming: one for the device under test (DUT) channel and the other for the internal RF loopback channel. The effect of the LO initial phase and the proposed method for the compensation are demonstrated by experiments at a single frequency and sweeping frequency, respectively. The results show that the proposed method can compensate for the LO initial phases and ultra-wideband (UWB) pulses can be reconstructed correctly from the data sampled by a low-cost SDR.

scholarly journals Development and Experimental Evaluation of a Low-Cost Cooperative UAV Localization Network Prototype

2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Salil Goel ◽  
Allison Kealy ◽  
Bharat Lohani
Keyword(s):  
Information Sharing ◽  
Inertial Sensors ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
Wide Band ◽  
Cooperative Networks ◽  
Global Navigation Satellite Systems ◽  
Cooperative Localization ◽  
Cooperative Network ◽  
Precise Positioning ◽  
Assisted Navigation

Precise localization is one of the key requirements in the deployment of UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) for any application including precision mapping, surveillance, assisted navigation, search and rescue. The need for precise positioning is even more relevant with the increasing automation in UAVs and growing interest in commercial UAV applications such as transport and delivery. In the near future, the airspace is expected to be occupied with a large number of unmanned as well as manned aircraft, a majority of which are expected to be operating autonomously. This paper develops a new cooperative localization prototype that utilizes information sharing among UAVs and static anchor nodes for precise positioning of the UAVs. The UAVs are retrofitted with low-cost sensors including a camera, GPS receiver, UWB (Ultra Wide Band) radio and low-cost inertial sensors. The performance of the low-cost prototype is evaluated in real-world conditions in partially and obscured GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite Systems) environments. The performance is analyzed for both centralized and distributed cooperative network designs. It is demonstrated that the developed system is capable of achieving navigation grade (2–4 m) accuracy in partially GNSS denied environments, provided a consistent communication in the cooperative network is available. Furthermore, this paper provides experimental validation that information sharing is beneficial to improve positioning performance even in ideal GNSS environments. The experiments demonstrate that the major challenges for low-cost cooperative networks are consistent connectivity among UAV platforms and sensor synchronization.

scholarly journals Induced Magnetic Field-Based Indoor Positioning System for Underwater Environments

Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (6) ◽  
pp. 2218
Author(s):  
Sizhen Bian ◽  
Peter Hevesi ◽  
Leif Christensen ◽  
Paul Lukowicz
Keyword(s):  
Magnetic Field ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
Autonomous Underwater Vehicles ◽  
Wide Band ◽  
Propagation Delay ◽  
Positioning System ◽  
Indoor Environments ◽  
Coverage Area ◽  
Underwater Positioning ◽  
Similar Accuracy

Autonomous underwater vehicles (AUV) are seen as an emerging technology for maritime exploration but are still restricted by the availability of short range, accurate positioning methods necessary, e.g., when docking remote assets. Typical techniques used for high-accuracy positioning in indoor use case scenarios, such as systems using ultra-wide band radio signals (UWB), cannot be applied for underwater positioning because of the quick absorption of the positioning medium caused by the water. Acoustic and optic solutions for underwater positioning also face known problems, such as the multi-path effects, high propagation delay (acoustics), and environmental dependency. This paper presents an oscillating magnetic field-based indoor and underwater positioning system. Unlike those radio wave-based positioning modalities, the magnetic approach generates a bubble-formed magnetic field that will not be deformed by the environmental variation because of the very similar permeability of water and air. The proposed system achieves an underwater positioning mean accuracy of 13.3 cm in 2D and 19.0 cm in 3D with the multi-lateration positioning method and concludes the potential of the magnetic field-based positioning technique for underwater applications. A similar accuracy was also achieved for various indoor environments that were used to test the influence of cluttered environment and of cross environment. The low cost and power consumption system is scalable for extensive coverage area and could plug-and-play without pre-calibration.

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