Which NI kit will do Radar DSP on Board

[Bilal ALam]

Hi, I am undergrad student and doing my final term project. I need to tap baseband signal from a radar and do signal processing on a fpga kit. I m new to both FPGA's and DSP. Can anyone guide me which NI kit I should use be keeping in mind that I also want to display the processed signal on LabView VI in the form of PPI display. 

Thanks

[Sarah_Y]

Hi Bilal,

There is no NI Radar toolkit that can directly do what you are looking for.  But that doesn't mean that it is not possible.  For me to make an accurate recommendation of the best way to do this, I need to know a little more about your application.

• What frequency does your Radar operate at?  
• Are you planning to acquire the Radar, downconvert it to a baseband signal, and then do the post processing/DSP?
• What sort of DSP are you trying to do?
• Is there a particular reason that this processing must be done onboard with an FPGA instead of on a host computer?
• What hardware (if any) and software do you already have?

The more information you can provide about you application and project, the better I will be able to help you troubleshoot this.  Let me know and I'd be happy to help.

[Bilal ALam]

Hi Sarah,

               Thanks for replying. Actually i plan to use any FPGA based NI hardware kit to acquire the analog Radar signal , perform A/D at a high rate say 100 MSamples/s , perform a small portion of DSP i-e matched filtering on FPGA and then pass the data to Host Computer where i plan to do MTI(moving target indicator) which is simply high pass filtering , doppler processing (computing FFT), thresholding and finally display the result on host computer.

               Currently no hardware is being used for the said purpose. The Radar is operating at 10 GHz. I was recommended by my istructor to use LabView and NI kits for they have good real time DSP support.

Looking Forward for a reply,

Bilal Alam

[Sarah_Y]

Hi Bilal,

Doing matched filtering with an FPGA is relatively easy using NI hardware and toolkits such as a FlexRIO board.  However, there are a few steps in between that need to be taken.  

First, you have to consider the Nyquist Theorem, which states that in order to acquire a signal, you need to be sampling it at least twice as fast as the frequency of your signal.  With a 10 GHz signal, that would mean that you need to sample at 20 GS/s.  To get around this, the signal needs to be down converted first.  NI offers hardware that can do this down conversion (5665 14 GHz VSA).  However, if you have another device that can down convert this signal, that may be the best solution due to your time frame and the cost of a VSA.

Once you have a down converted, then you can use a FlexRIO module to do you onboard signal processing.  

Let me know about what types of hardware you have available so I can help you better with your applications.

[Bilal ALam]

Hi Sarah,

             Thanks once again for replying. Actually the radar system im working on is operational. The idea is to learn Radar Dsp and implement the same on an FPGA(the existing system is old based on analog ics ,flip flops etc). So, the signal can be tapped  both at Rf and Baseband. I chose to tap baseband signal to avoid the down conversion. Now, once i have the baseband signal i need to perform ADC and then do the processing and display it on the Host.

I need a hardware kit suitable for the said purpose.

Thanks.

Looking forward for reply,

Bilal Alam

[TheGeeze]

Hi Bilal

If you still require 100MS/s, then the best option for you would be the NI 5781 Base Band Transiever for NI Flex RIO.  Keep in mind this requires a Flex Rio card as well as a PXI system.  We have an FPGA RF Communications Library that has matched filtering capabilities.  

Thanks,

Ryan