Description
Software Defined Radio (SDR) is commonly used in various applications for communications, radar, navigation, broadcast and much more. But it is also possible to characterize material conditions by means of resonance effects at high frequencies. SDR using an RF transmitter, antenna, RF coupler and receiver may be used to stimulate components and depending on the reflected signal the condition of specific materials can be determined.
If the material is not at a stillstand but moving fast, it may be necessary to process the received RF data very fast to determine the condition within milliseconds.
IRS designed and developed a software to determine the status of materials with a fast realtime network analyzer, based on NI USRP platform. NI USRP may be used for powerful applications in small quantities, or as rapid prototyping platform where the programmer may focus on the application rather than struggling with limitations due to hardware.
Key Facts
- Frequency range 10MHz…6GHz (typical 100Mhz)
- Baseband bandwidth up to 160MHz (typical 20MHz)
- Characteristic values calculation in real-time within milliseconds (Resonance and quality factor)
- Continuous streaming of characteristic values to Host-PC
- Online evaluation pass/fail possible within milliseconds
- Optional use of hardware-trigger to synchronize measurements with external signal