AWR1443BOOST: How to increase the detected point for 3D point cloud visualization

Hello Cuong Pham,

The query on the number of objects detected and details of the detection matrix is answered below:
e2e.ti.com/.../2306304

Thanks,
Raghu

Thanks a lot Raghu. We've already checked that out but it seems that increasing MMW_MAX_OBJ_OUT only works for 2D plotting. Is there anyway to increase the maximum object point with elevation, and if there is such a way, is it harmful to the radar or something like that?

Hello Anil,

Thank you very much for the answer. Yes we want a way to visualize the wire in the scene. This is the point cloud visualization, and it's really difficult to "understand" which one is the wire.

The wire is covered multiple metal lines, the pattern is repititive (Bragg pattern). You can see it in the below picture. The electric line is stationary but the radar will be carried and moved with the drone so basically there will be movement between the electric line and the radar.

We also think about getting raw signal from the radar and process to get the angle of the object corresponding to the shape of the electric line cover pattern. Is there anyway to do such a thing?

Thank you very much.

Hello Anil,

We understand that it is possible to mount the radar on a moving platform and register the points using odometry data. We are currently trying it too. Anyway that is not the exact purpose of our project. We aim to use radar and a more simple solution to detect the power lines and the drone will automatically recognize the path and move along the power lines (as long as there is the sign of power lines).

Is there any way that we can limit the radar scan range to a specific range (such as from 2 meters to 10 meters), and some how make the radar to detect multiple points on the object? If that's possible, could you please provide us with a straigh-forward direction, such as where in the codes that we can modify?

Thank you very much. Our project is currently stuck at this point. As long as there are feasible input of the lines, the recognition is not a problem because there are many algorithm that can recognize the line feature.

Best regards,

Cuong

Hello Cuong,

Regarding your question on limiting the range of detection, you can use the peakGrouping API (pg 25 of the mmwave SDK userguide). Note that the 5th and 6th inputs allow you specify the min Range and the maxRange (in Range indices). Also, disable peakGrouping in both doppler and range.

You can then reduce the thresholds in the Cfar API (for both range and doppler) to see more detected points.

If possible, could you share the chirp configuration that you are using? In any case, make sure that you've configured for the best range-resolution (i.e. the highest RF-bandwidth).

Regards
Anil

Dear Anil,

Currently we've been getting back to our radar project. In our understanding, the range resolution is the distance between each range index, such as for the range resolution of 0.04 (m), the range index 0 will be 0 -> 0.04, index 1 will be 0.04 -> 0.08, index 2 will be 0.08 -> 0.12, and so on. So we tried to limit the detection of objects between a minimum and maximum range, by modifying, for example, the 5th input (minRangeIndex) to 100 and the 6th input (maxRangeIndex) to 200 in order to detect objects between 100 * 0.04 -> 200 * 0.04. However, the result is that the radar can still detect the objects which are closer than the minimum range. Could you please tell us what is not correct here?

This is one of the configurations that we tried:

% ***************************************************************
% Created for SDK ver:01.00
% Created using Visualizer ver:1.1.0.1
% Frequency:77
% Platform:xWR14xx
% Scene Classifier:best_range_res
% Azimuth Resolution(deg):15 + Elevation
% Range Resolution(m):0.044
% Maximum unambiguous Range(m):9.01
% Maximum Radial Velocity(m/s):1
% Radial velocity resolution(m/s):0.13
% Frame Duration(msec):100
% Range Detection Threshold (dB):15
% Range Peak Grouping:disabled
% Doppler Peak Grouping:disabled
% Static clutter removal:disabled
% ***************************************************************
sensorStop
flushCfg
dfeDataOutputMode 1
channelCfg 15 7 0
adcCfg 2 1
adcbufCfg 0 1 0 1
profileCfg 0 77 267 7 57.14 0 0 70 1 240 4884 0 0 30
chirpCfg 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1
chirpCfg 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 4
chirpCfg 2 2 0 0 0 0 0 2
frameCfg 0 2 16 0 100 1 0
guiMonitor 1 1 0 0 0 1
cfarCfg 0 2 8 4 3 0 1280
peakGrouping 1 0 0 45 113
multiObjBeamForming 1 0.5
calibDcRangeSig 0 -5 8 256
sensorStart

Thank you very much for the support!

Cuong

Dear Anil,

If the range resolution is 0.044 (meter), isn't it should be minimum = 45 * 0.044 = 1.98 (meter) and maximum = 113 * 0.044 = 4.972 (meter)? So it means nearest object will be from around 2 meters to 5 meters, but why multiply it by 10 so it'd be 20 meters to 50 meters according to your calculation?

Hi Cuong,

Yup. You are right. I misread the range resolution. You shouldn't be seeing objects outside [1.98 4.972] meters with this configuration.

Regards

Anil

Dear Anil,

Thanks for the answer. However the radar still detect the object outside that range. How can we solve this problem?