Achieving intelligent buildings is not a dream. Millimeter wave technology makes intelligent sensors within reach!

Latest update time: 2021-09-01 03:05

Number of readings:

If buildings can be truly intelligent, how will they bring about earth shaking changes in our lives?

Imagine that if you can know people's location, whereabouts and whether they are safe in a commercial building, the building system may be completely changed. The camera will only enable the recording function when necessary; Lighting and HVAC systems can work more efficiently according to actual use; If there are too many people in the elevator, the elevator can skip the stop at a specific floor. Imagine that people can go through the automatic door like in "Star Trek", and the door will open automatically.

Just as intelligent autonomous technology (including autonomous cars, unmanned aerial vehicles and robots) will completely change the way people and objects move, future buildings will use intelligent sensor To automatically adjust the system to improve efficiency, comfort and reduce waste. Monitoring people's position and tracking their actions indoors and outdoors is a key sensing function, which can improve the intelligence of the system and create intelligent, efficient and automated buildings in the future.

The sensing technologies in the field of building automation today include passive infrared (PIR), camera and active infrared (laser radar, three-dimensional time of flight). These technologies face challenges in accuracy, privacy, environmental robustness and system complexity, making them unable to effectively meet the requirements of true intelligence.

TI's millimeter wave (mmWave) technology creates radar based sensors that can overcome the sensing challenges in building automation. TI's millimeter wave technology can provide point clouds of object position and velocity information within the sensing range. Because the technology uses high RF, the sensing function is still robust to various challenging outdoor conditions such as strong light, darkness, fog, smoke and precipitation. The technology can also be sensed through plastic and drywall, so it can be hidden in some equipment or achieve cleaner industrial design.

TI's millimeter wave sensor can also meet the requirements of indoor population statistics applications. Figure 1 shows an example of the output of a millimeter wave sensor that ignores tables and chairs and tracks the positions of multiple people at the same time.

Figure 1: Example of indoor position output generated by a millimeter wave sensor that simultaneously tracks the positions of multiple people relative to the two frames shown on the ground

The integrated hardware processing and the onboard DSP core of TI IWR1642 millimeter wave sensor can realize complete edge processing without using complex system topology or expensive external processors.

In the population statistics sample (see the block diagram in Figure 2), IWR1642 manages all the software used for tracking and statistics. No external processor is required, and only one PC in the sample is used for visualization and configuration.

Figure 2: Clear the processing and calculation required, reducing the complexity of the system and eliminating the need for external processors

The personnel tracking and statistical reference design using millimeter wave radar sensors shows how the sample works and how it is replicated using the IWR1642 Evaluation Module (EVM). TI provides source code, including all basic software building blocks, libraries and algorithms, in the Millimeter Wave Software Development Kit (SDK) and the demographic lab on TI Explorer. The sample even contains several examples that support use cases up to 6 meters and 14 meters long.

If these examples do not fully meet your use case requirements, you can use the built-in configuration tool shown in Figure 3 or follow the tuning guide to adjust the performance.

Figure 3: In the population statistics sample, you can use the PC visualization tool to configure the area and calculate the detection area; This tool is provided as a reference in TI Explorer based on MATLAB source code

In the future, we will use C674x digital signal processor (DSP) on TI IWR1642 to provide filtering, classification and other algorithms for building automation applications. Imagine that if the motion detection system can ignore the contour of objects, such as trees moving in the wind or leaves falling on the ground, or classify the animals and people passing by quickly. Enable edge detection to determine whether objects should be tracked, which will reduce error detection in building automation systems. Millimeter wave technology provides a wealth of information on range, speed, angle, size, and reflectivity, and can be used with the onboard C674x DSP to achieve these functions in a single chip solution.

Want to know more about building automation applications using millimeter wave technology? Click quickly Read the original text Go to see!