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AWR2243BOOST: How to configure MIMO Radar sensor for basic TDM with all 3 TX channels using mmWaveStudio

Dominik Axtmann
Prodigy 60 points
Part Number: AWR2243BOOST
Other Parts Discussed in Thread: AWR2243,

Tool/software:

Hi,

I'm quite new to MIMO Radars and the AWR2243/mmWaveStudio specifically.

I could only find high level user guides and data sheets for my AWR2243BOOST + DCA1000 and mmWaveStudio but none which explain the GUI or the setup process in detail without assuming in-depth knowledge.

I want to setup my sensor for basic TDM using all 3 TX channels, one after another, to record the raw ADC data and process it (range-doppler, CFAR, AoA) using my own Python codes (raw ADC recording and Python processing working already).

But I can't find any guides or even just documentation of the panels and possible settings in mmWaveStudio. Just looking at the "SensorConfig" tab shows so many settings and sub-menus for chirp and frame configs, as well as profiles. But configuring it is a pain right now as I'm basically just playing around with most of the settings trying to somehow figure out what they do.

For now, I just want to have a basic FMCW up-chirp with start and stop frequency (e.g. bandwidth) in a given chirp period.

The chirp should be sent by TX0, after that TX1 and then TX2 and then all over again, while sampling the received signal on all 4 RX channels in parallel to construct a virtual array of size 12.

This procedure should then be repeated for X rounds.

Can someone guide me on the setup or help me understand the meaning of the different settings in mmWaveStudio? Or does someone know a good and detailed guide for it?

Many thanks in advance to everyone who is trying to help :)

PS: If you have an already working config (file) you don't mind sharing, I'd be happy with that too as I can load it in mmWaveStudio and see which settings changed 

  • 0
    TI__Expert 4290 points

    Hello,

    We will be able to help you through this. First of all, have you gone through the user guide and other documentation in C:\ti\mmwave_studio_xx_xx_xx_xx\docs? That will be your starting point to get a basic understanding on how to use mmwave studio. 

    Regards,
    Shailesh

  • 0 in reply to Shailesh Joshi
    Prodigy 60 points

    Hi Shailesh,

    thank you for your reply.

    I went through all the PDFs in the mentioned directory, the only reasonably helpful document was the mmWave Studio User Guide, but it just tells the reader where to find the sensor, chirp and frame config screens etc. without going into detail like what the individual options mean or how to configure chirps and frames.

    As far as I understand it from looking at the SensorConfig-tab, I can specify multiple chirp profiles with different slopes, start/stop times, sample rates and RX gains and also assign them to TX channels. I guess I can assign those profiles to chirp IDs and then loop through the chirp profiles in one frame?

    The meaning of the settings in the "Profile" group are mostly clear to me, although I don't know how to find the correct settings and balance them for a given scenario. I help myself by using the mmWave Sensing Estimator to find a working chirp profile or just use trial and error although I'd prefer to understand the limits of the parameters and how they affect each other.

    Do you have any tips on how to proceed from here to get a better understanding for the software and the chip?

    Best regards,

    Dominik

  • 0 in reply to Dominik Axtmann
    TI__Expert 4290 points

    Hi Dominik,

    Dominik Axtmann said:
    I can specify multiple chirp profiles with different slopes

    Your understanding is correct in these lines. For simple TDM, you can just create one chirp profile, and assign it to all your chirps, then only thing you would change chirp to chirp is the TX enabled which is available at the bottom in the Chirp Config section. You would create chirp 0, 1 and 2 like that.

    i.e.
    Start Chirp for Cfg = 0; End Chirp for Cfg = 0; TX enable = TX0; press Set
    Start Chirp for Cfg = 1; End Chirp for Cfg = 1; TX enable = TX1; press Set
    Start Chirp for Cfg = 2; End Chirp for Cfg = 2; TX enable = TX2; press Set

    Then in your frame configuration you can set start chirp tx = 0 and the end chirp TX = 2, which creates your 3 chirp sequence, then you can repeat this sequence in a frame by setting no of chirp loops. 

    To go further from here, it depends on what you want to achieve. Studio GUI is one of the ways to evaluate our chips which provides a LUA based interface to the device. You can try out the mmWave SDK for AWR2243 to learn to develop SW that can be running on the device.

    Eventually both the interfaces interact with the radar front-end system on the chip which supports several features using APIs. Studio commands are also just translated into these API commands at lower level. The detailed description of the APIs can help you understand the commands that you are sending from Studio in more depth, you can find this description in the "Interface Control Document", which you can find on this page: https://www.ti.com/tool/download/MMWAVE-DFP-2G

    Regards,
    Shailesh

  • 0 in reply to Shailesh Joshi
    Prodigy 60 points

    Hi Shailesh,

    currently I "just" need to work with basic TDM configurations and test them. This is part of my thesis which contains simulating the Radar chip/generating simulated ADC values for a given scene, compare them to the real-world data and try to model the chip as detailed as possible as well as capture and convert the raw data to my own HDF format and then build a complete processing chain in Python including CFAR and AoA processing. This is why I need the TDM config, as it "generates" an additional 8 virtual RX channels for my AoA/DoA processing.

    Do you know whether the MATLAB post-processing utility uses virtual channels/TDM chirps for more precise DoA processing? I can select the chirp profile with another slider just like the frames and chirps but this only changes the entries in the config table below. I'd like to verify my settings and recording setup with a known-working DSP chain as I'm still developing and debugging my own chain so I can't tell whether it's my Radar settings or my DSP that causes errors or wrong results.

    Back to mmWave Studio, I found explanations or methods to calculate values for almost all parameters, but I couldn't find any instructions for the "TX Start Time". Should I just set it to the "Idle Time" value? Also, do the delay parameters stack or are they absolute values/time offsets to a global "0 seconds" start time?

    I tried to use the example chirp config for "MRR" from the "Programming Chirp Parameters in TI Radar Devices" document, but when I plugged the values into the chirp calculator, it gave me an Idle Time of 2µs but it gave me an error until I adjusted it to 5µs.

    Also, could you explain me what the "RF Gain Target" and the "Periodicity" parameters mean?

    After recording some raw data, I often get this bug and didn't find a way to resolve it yet. Do you know what causes this error or how I can fix it?

    [13:46:03]  ... MWMCR::EvaluateFunction error ...
    [13:46:03]  Reference to non-existent field 'NumOfSubFrames'.
    [13:46:03]  Error in => process_adc_data.m at line 76.
    [13:46:03]  
    [13:46:03]  ... Matlab M-code Stack Trace ...

    Best regards,

    Dominik

  • 0 in reply to Dominik Axtmann
    TI__Expert 4290 points

    Dominik,

    From the mmwave studio user guide, "The processing assumes a 1-Tx 4-Rx antenna configuration, with all 4 Rx antennas lying on the same plane (separated by /2, where is the starting wavelength of the FMCW ramp)." So you might not be able to get a virtual array processing from this.

    You can set TX Start Time = 0 if you are unsure. And Idle time = 2us is usually very low, unless it is important to you, you can keep it relaxed to >5 us. 

    Shailesh Joshi said:
    The detailed description of the APIs can help you understand the commands that you are sending from Studio in more depth, you can find this description in the "Interface Control Document", which you can find on this page: https://www.ti.com/tool/download/MMWAVE-DFP-2G

    Give this document a try if you want to understand some underlying parameters. You can set RF Gain Target = 36 dB; and Periodicity is the size of the frame which is your chirp time + additional idle time. 

    That error is not expected. It might come if you have enabled Advanced Frame Configuration. 

    It will be good if you can raise these errors in a separate e2e thread. I believe your original query has been answered so I will mark this thread resolved for now. 

    Thanks,
    Shailesh