IoT radar beam is set by bending its flexible PCB, and more Fraunhofer gems from Embedded World

IoT radar

Called Flex-Radar, its antennas are built into two polyimide wings (laid flat in the photo, hinge/conductors are on the two adjacent edges).

Instead of active beam steering – which would be too expensive for intended applications, the wings are simply angled by hand during assembly or installation, then held by the enclosure or glued into place.

Both wings have 4 x 4 elements, one wing with 16 receive element, and the other with 15 receive and one transmit.

Alongside the transceiver chain, the board also includes FPGA-based signal processing for FFT (fourier transform) and target detection.

Potential applications include occupancy detection for car parking spaces and people presence detection.

Alongside this on the Fraunhofer IZM stand at Embedded World was a battery-powered chemical sensor designed to run un-tethered inside a pipe – in this case one intended to convey sewage.

The RF environment is challenging, according to the IZM man on the stand, being both very high loss and varying with the depth of liquid moment to moment. Despite this, around 20m range has been achieved, and the chosen frequency of 169MHz.

One more item on the IZM stand, which was a delight to visit or those who enjoy technology at the sharp end, was a module combining a 79GHz radar and stereo visual cameras.

The radar is MIMO, with antennas based on glass-interposer technology.

In-module processing includes sensor-fusion and deep-learning algorithms, and the project is a joint effort between Fraunhoffer IZM, InnoSent, Jabil Optics, AVL, John Deere, Silicon Radar, Fraunhofer Fokus and DCAITI.