AWR2243: MMWCAS Cascade TXBF: tx beam steering doesn't seem to be 'steering'

Hi,

We have poor azimuth/range heatmap txbf demo results for both tda2 tx beamforming demo, and mmWaveStudio cascade TXBF matlab demo. Using Cascade awr2243 MMWCAS setup.

We disable the RX beamforming portion of the demos (bios demo and mmWaveStudio demo) which in both case roughly equates to bypassing the, "a1_az*(RX_data'*RX_data)*a1_az" step, although it is implemented on MATLAB in one scenario and on the target application in the other. Here is the exact modification we are using on the mmWaveStudio based demo:

Plot_advFraConfig_TXBF_rangeAzimuth_stich.m...

%perform beamsteering towards the angle TX steering angles
rangeDopFFT1_zeroDop = squeeze(rangeDopFFT1(:,DopplerFFTSize/2+1,:,:));
range_angle_stich = [];
for iangle = 1:num_sweep
    angleTX = SweepAngles(iangle);
    wx = sind(angleTX);
    a1_az = exp(1*j*2*pi*d*(D_RX*wx));
    
    for irange = 1:size(rangeDopFFT1_zeroDop,1)
        RX_data = squeeze(rangeDopFFT1_zeroDop(irange,:,iangle));
        %range_angle_stich(irange, iangle) = a1_az*(RX_data'*RX_data)*a1_az';      % Commented out >>> Mike Hall - RX Beamforming bypass
        range_angle_stich(irange, iangle) = RX_data(1, 1);                         % Added in      <<< Mike Hall - RX Beamforming bypass
    end
end

This allows us to check the TX beam steering performance in isolation!

For the 'vanilla' unmodified version of the mmWaveStudio txbf demo, our azimuth/range heatmap looks like this:

For several environments the results are similar, point reflectors are correlated to the rangeFFT response, but the tx beam steering doesn't have any discernable effect.

Can you please replicate this test, with the aforementioned changes within Plot_advFraConfig_TXBF_rangeAzimuth_stich.m, and demonstrate any discernable TX beam steering function?

Kind regards,

Mike

For this ticket