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AWR1642BOOST: Why the antenna transmission power of the REV A board is lower than the REV E1 board

Lifeng Liu
Intellectual 330 points
Part Number: AWR1642BOOST
Other Parts Discussed in Thread: AWR1642

Hi,

     According to my measurement, the antenna transmission power of the REV A board is around 10dB lower than the REV E1 board with exactly the same mmw demo program flashed.  I'm still using the SDK 0.8. Does that matter? I see on the new REV A board,  two temperature sensors are added. Is it because I didn't configure those sensors correctly?

    Thanks.

  • 0
    TI__Guru 58035 points
    Hello Jerry,
    There should not be any major difference in performance between the two revisions since the design is exactly the same in terms of RF and AWR device perspective. SDK 0.8 would work on both the boards.
    Could you explain how exactly you are measuring the transmit power?

    Regards,
    Vivek
  • 0 in reply to Vivek Dham
    Intellectual 330 points
    Hi Vivek,
    During the anechoic chamber test, I noticed the detected peak value of the same test target (an angle reflector) is much lower when I was using the new REV A evaluation board.The location of the radar and the test target is the same. So I performed an open air horn test on the spectrum analyzer and I noticed nearly a 10dB transmitting power lower. Could you tell me is there any ROM firmware updates for AWR1642 chip used on the REV A board? Many thanks.
  • 0 in reply to Lifeng Liu
    TI__Guru 58035 points
    Hello Jerry,
    The AWR1642 device is exactly the same on both the revisions of the board. Are you seeing the same behavior on both the transmitters? Am wondering if there could be a slight soldering issue on that particular board which might be causing this variation.
    One thing to keep in mind is that there could be some impact on the orientation also. If there is an angle between the radar device and the object in the elevation plan the antenna gain would reduce by about 3dB at a 10deg tilt.

    Regards,
    Vivek
  • 0 in reply to Vivek Dham
    Intellectual 330 points

    Hi Vivek,

            Thanks for the reply. You are right. I did a rough radar transmission power pattern measurement for the vertical orientation. I noticed the transmission power of the REV A board is shifted about 15 degrees, but the total transmission power is nearly the same. so I need to flip over the REV A  board 15 degrees to get the similar signal of REV E. The rough radar transmission power pattern is illustrated  in the following plot:

         Regards,