Explore a mmWave radar design that scans objects in 3D, detects zone breaches, and simplifies deployment. Want to know more? Read here!
The TIDEP-01010, a reference design from Texas Instruments (TI )uses TI’s single-chip millimeter-wave (mmWave) technology to create an area scanner that detects and maps objects in 3D space. The company claims that the mmWave sensing is well-suited for industrial applications due to its resilience to heat, water, dust, and poor lighting. Applications include area scanner safety guards, proximity sensors, and light curtain safety guards. The design engineers can utilize this reference design to rapidly deploy effective and reliable mmWave sensing solutions, ensuring quicker time-to-market.
The design is based on the IWR6843 mmWave sensor and integrates a complete radar processing chain, including radar configuration, ADC capture, low-level FFT, and signal processing. It is built on the TI mmWave SDK, providing a seamless software experience with APIs, libraries, and tools for evaluation, development, and data visualization.
The reference design can be implemented using either the IWR6843ISK or IWR6843AOP EVM. Both modules enable the detection of objects within the sensor’s field of view and represent them as 3D point clouds. The EVMs are user-friendly evaluation modules for the mmWave sensing device. These single-chip devices feature a 60-GHz mmWave radar transceiver, an on-chip C67x DSP core, and low-power ARM R4F controllers.
The mmWave sensor is preloaded with a flashed image that, when booted and initialized, receives a chirp configuration set through the area scanner visualizer. In the visualizer, users can define the location and dimensions of monitoring zones and adjust visualization settings. The configured chirp is then sent to the sensor, monitoring the specified area for zone occupancy.
The radar device detects the strongest reflections and reports them as objects to the host PC via UART. As the sensor observes, these detected objects form a point cloud representation of the scene. If an object produces a point cloud with at least 15 points within a monitored zone, the zone is flagged as breached, and the visualizer updates to indicate the occupied area.
The design supports sensing ranges from 0 m to 10 m, with an azimuth field of view (FOV) of up to 120° using the IWR6843ISK or 130° in both azimuth and elevation using the IWR6843AOP. The design references the processing chain source code provided with the mmWave SDK and is based on proven EVM hardware designs, allowing quick time-to-market and out-of-the-box demonstrations.
This reference design demonstrates the detection of people or objects entering a zone in an indoor environment. The system includes static clutter removal to ensure accuracy, preventing permanent fixtures like walls from triggering zone occupancy detection. The chirp configuration is designed to achieve high doppler resolution, sufficient range resolution, and maximum velocity, enabling precise localization and tracking of human movement, including walking.
TI has tested this reference design. It comes with a bill of materials (BOM), schematics, assembly drawing, printed circuit board (PCB) layout, and more. The company’s website has additional data about the reference design. To read more about this reference design, click here.
