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IWR6843ISK: Can I run AOP low power demo on ISK board? Alternatives?

Part Number: IWR6843ISK
Other Parts Discussed in Thread: IWR6843, IWR6843AOP

Tool/software:

Hi,

I'm new to mmWave radars and trying to evaluate low power modes using the following prebuilt binary:

C:\ti\radar_toolbox_3_10_00_05\source\ti\examples\Fundamentals\xWR6843_Low_Power_Modes\prebuilt_binaries\out_of_box_6843_aop_lp.bin

and config:


sensorStop
flushCfg
dfeDataOutputMode 1
channelCfg 15 5 0
adcCfg 2 1
adcbufCfg -1 0 1 1 1
lowPower 1 1
profileCfg 0 60 7 3 24 0 0 166 1 256 12500 0 0 158
chirpCfg 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1
chirpCfg 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 4
frameCfg 0 1 32 1 100 1 0
guiMonitor -1 1 1 1 0 0 1
cfarCfg -1 0 2 8 4 3 0 15.0 0
cfarCfg -1 1 0 4 2 3 1 15.0 0
multiObjBeamForming -1 1 0.5
calibDcRangeSig -1 0 -5 8 256
clutterRemoval -1 0
compRangeBiasAndRxChanPhase 0.0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0
measureRangeBiasAndRxChanPhase 0 1. 0.2
aoaFovCfg -1 -90 90 -90 90
cfarFovCfg -1 0 0.25 9.0
cfarFovCfg -1 1 -20.16 20.16
extendedMaxVelocity -1 0
CQRxSatMonitor 0 3 4 63 0
CQSigImgMonitor 0 127 4
analogMonitor 0 0
lvdsStreamCfg -1 0 0 0
calibData 0 0 0
idlePowerMode 20 1 1 1 1 1
sensorStart

But I don't notice any difference in power consumption.

My goal is to compare power usage on the IWR6843ISK board between the standard out_of_box_6843_isk.bin and the low power AOP binary.

My questions:

  1. Can I load and run out_of_box_6843_aop_lp.bin on the ISK board and expect meaningful results?

  2. If not, is there an equivalent low power demo specifically for the ISK?

  3. Would porting/modifying the AOP low power source code be the right approach for ISK?

Thanks in advance for any guidance.

  • Hello, 

    My apologies for the delay. What is your end application? If you are looking to evaluate low power radar I would suggest instead looking at the xWRLxxxx family of devices which has built-in hardware hooks for enabling much lower power. With the IWR6843 and older generations of our devices, it is only possible to make some software modifications resulting in some power savings but even with these you would not be approaching the power of IWRL6432 for example.

    My goal is to compare power usage on the IWR6843ISK board between the standard out_of_box_6843_isk.bin and the low power AOP binary.

    This actually would not be an equivalent comparison because of the differences in the processing chain between the ISK and AOP binaries. To clarify, for IWR6843 there are actually 2 different "out of box demos" which is the basic example that most of our other examples are based from. The out of box demo for IWR6843ISK uses both the ARM R4F and the C67x DSP in it's processing while the out of box demo for IWR6843AOP (and subsequently the low power AOP demo) does not use the C67x DSP for any processing, only the R4F and HWA.

    To answer your questions. 

    1. No. The angle processing will be incorrect since it is expecting the AOP antenna layout. 

    2. This is not available.

    3. Yes, this is the right approach. I would recommend you compare the source code for the out of box demo for AOP ({RADAR_TOOLBOX}\source\ti\examples\Out_Of_Box_Demo\src\xwr6843AOP) and the source code for the AOP low power demo. Then apply all of the same changes on top of the ISK out of box demo.

    Best regards,

    Josh