Design and Development of Data Acquisition/Processing and Communication Interface for Radar Front-End

Abstract: This thesis follows the design process of a back end. The purpose of this back end is to interface a radar front end, developed by Acreo Swedish ICT, and stream it’s digitalized output to a PC using Universal Serial Bus (USB) 3.0. The front end, which acts as a basis for this project, is a Frequency Modulated Continuous Wave (FMCW) radar which is connected to the back end by a header. The header connects the digitalized radar signals, together with two SPI-buses and a few GPIO pins. Thus, enabling configuration and set up of the front end board via a PC. The result of the thesis is a data acquisition board that can be used to interface with the front end. The implemented back end features an FPGA to handle the ADC data from the front end, so the board has DSP capabilities, but can also stream the raw radar data. The FPGA is connected to a USB 3.0 controller through a 32-bit parallel interface. The configuration of the front end, via the produced board, is verified in it’s functionality and can be controlled by a PC using a simple GUI. Commands are sent through the USB 3.0 controller to a front end controller which handles the communication. Since getting the hardware functional has been the main objective of the thesis, the project has been deemed to be successful. The final result is a back end radar prototype, which has the requested core hardware functionalities. In addition to this, the prototype has the capacity to act as a platform for further expanding its functionality after a hand over of the project to Acreo Swedish ICT.