Florence Engineering developed a MIMO radar for an important customer in the industrial automation sector. The development of this type of system was necessary to have a highly performing and customized detection solution.
MIMO radar, an acronym for Multiple Input Multiple Output, uses a system of multiple antennas in both transmission and reception to increase the precision and reliability of measurements. The MIMO radar in question uses four Texas Instruments RF front ends in cascade to achieve high resolution and angular coverage.
The chip used is based on CMOS technology and integrates an RF transceiver, a digital signal processing unit and an ARM Cortex-R4F processor. Additionally, the chip offers advanced features for object detection, such as chirp modulation and beamforming. The cascaded four-chip configuration achieves higher transmit and receive bandwidth, as well as higher tracking accuracy. Furthermore, this configuration offers wider angular coverage, thus improving the radar’s ability to detect objects in the vicinity.
Designing a MIMO radar requires careful planning, including definition of design specifications, component selection, and circuit board design. In particular, the design of the printed circuit must include the integration of the four chips in cascade, the power supply and the wiring of the antennas. Once the design is completed, the MIMO radar can be used for various purposes in industrial automation, such as detecting moving objects or measuring distance and speed. Furthermore, thanks to its highly customizable configuration, MIMO radar can be adapted to different applications, thus offering a flexible and reliable solution for object detection.