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Microcontroller Radar Stations utilizing Software Defined Radio (SDR)

Undergraduate #131
Discipline: Technology and Engineering
Subcategory: Electrical Engineering
Session: 1
Room: Marriott Balcony A

Keenan Leatham - University of the District of Columbia
Co-Author(s): Esther Ososanya



SDR – Software Define Radio, a system in which the components are implemented in software, instead of the traditional way of hardware implementation. It consists of an RF front-end followed by an analog- to-digital converter, which provides sample signals to a host computer. Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) platforms are utilized to access the host computer, Khadas VIM Series III,and Raspberry Pi. This project consists of creating radar stations in order to track airplanes and do real time signal processing. These radar stations can be accessed remotely at any time without being physically present. Also, microcontrollers are cascaded to create a supercomputer to improve the performance of different simulations. Experiments were conducted utilizing a military grade antenna or metal antenna to transmit and receive signals ,which was successful. This research experiment using a host computer, Khadas VIM Series III, and multiple Raspberry-Pis can be utilized to make big bulky systems more compact. Signal Processing (SP) has and continuously been one of the crucial research areas of Electrical Engineering departments. Great numbers of the technologies that we rely on nowadays like computers, radio, or cell phones are capable to communicating with each other based upon signal processing platform (analog-to-digital and vice versa). One would say that SP is the power of today’s digital entertainment and the future of the technology. Some of the important fields such as speech/audio processing, speech recognition, hearing aids, autonomous driving, etc would not be visible without the contributions of SP. Software-defined radio (SDR) could be an ideal source for a newcomer to learn about SP.In the past, a practical laboratory for SDR during the university coursework was not proposed due to the expense of materials, the coding complexity and time-consuming of the experiments itself. With the Raspberry Pi board, Khadas VIM series III, two crucial problems have been resolved. The boards came with a reasonable cost and is programmable to operate with other educational software like Matlab. Furthermore, many of recent programs have the built-in system in the support package and one can simply obtain automatic files on Github that satisfy his design. This benefits those students with no programming background about Complex Signal Processing algorithms to take on designing and implementing SDR projects. In this project I will be concentrating on implementing radar stations that can track planes, process signals, and perform multiple simulations simultaneously. Raspberry Pi boards, Khadas VIM series III, and SDR dongle will serve as a receiving radio server to carry the digital data through the TCP network back to our designated radar station. Also, I will be building a metal antenna testing the design. The goal of this project is to create portable radar systems that can be used in real life applications. This would allow in many fields of study to use very small microcontrollers to complete everyday task. Many devices would benefit of having an alternative portable system compared to a bulkier design. My goal is to create a reliable radar that can run nonstop without much down time and push the limits of how far different microcontrollers can perform in different real-world applications.

Funder Acknowledgement(s): Esther Ososanya

Faculty Advisor: Esther Ososanya, eososanya@udc.edu

Role: The part of the research I performed was the simulations and the construction of the radar bases.

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This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) under Grant No. DUE-1930047. Any opinions, findings, interpretations, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of its authors and do not represent the views of the AAAS Board of Directors, the Council of AAAS, AAAS’ membership or the National Science Foundation.

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