mmwave

The MMWCAS-RF-EVM and MMWCAS-DSP-EVM boards from Texas Instruments (TI) are supported with the TI-provided software mmwave studio. As so, one needs a Windows OS and Matlab runtime engine to try out the millimeter wave radars and their capabilities.

This tool is a Linux driver for the RF and DSP boards, to enable the recording of data from a Linux OS. As so, it can be built to run on embedded Linux devices such as Raspberry Pi or so.

mmwave is based on the mmwavelink library and build out of the example source codes provided by TI.

NOTE:

• Only MIMO Configuration with all the 04 radar chips is currently supported with this driver.
• Only Ethernet connection to the board is currently supported.

Installation

All the third-party libraries needed are already present in the repository. mmwave can then be installed as follows:

    git clone <mmwave-repository-git-url>
    cd mmwave
    sudo make install # Build and install mmwave on the machine

Usage

You can first check if mmwave is properly installed by typing the help command.

 mmwave -h

You shall the see a help menu similar to the one below.

usage: mmwave [-d] [-p] [-i] [-c] [-r] [-t] [-f] [-h] [-v]

Configuration and control tool for TI MMWave cascade Evaluation Module

options:
    -d, --capture-dir              Name of the director where to store recordings on the DSP board 
    -p, --port                     Port number the DSP board server app is listening on 
    -i, --ip-addr                  IP Address of the MMWCAS DSP evaluation module 
    -c, --configure                Configure the MMWCAS-RF-EVM board 
    -r, --record                   Trigger data recording. This assumes that configuration is completed. 
    -t, --time                     Indicate how long the recording should last in minutes. Default: 1 min 
    -f, --cfg                      TOML Configuration file. Overwrite the default config when provided 
    -h, --help                     Print CLI option help and exit. 
    -v, --version                  Print program version and exit.

A default configuration is already implemented (as described below) and can be used.

    ip: 192.168.33.180      # MMWCAS-DSP-EVM IP Address
    port: 5001              # MMWCAS-DSP-EVM server port
    time: 1                 # Recording time in min

If the DSP board has been reconfigured with another IP address, you can provide the new IP address in argument with the --ip-addr CLI option.

Recording data

Default config

To record data, the typical command is:

mmwave -d <directory> --configure --record --time <duriation-in-minute>

# Exmaple
mmwave -d outdoor0 --configure --record --time 10

With this command, the radar chips are configured with the default configuration implemented in the source code.

# Default MIMO Configuration
#
#   - Max Range             : 80 m
#   - Range resolution      : 30 cm
#   - Max velocity          : 6.49 km/h
#   - Range resolution      : 0.4 km/h
#

profile:
    id: 0
    startFrequency: 77                      # GHz
    frequencySlope: 15.0148                 # MHz/us
    idleTime: 5                             # us
    adcStartTime: 6                         # us
    rampEndTime: 40                         # us
    numAdcSamples: 256                      # ADC Samples per chirp
    rxGain: 48                              # dB

frame:
    numLoops: 16                            # Number of chirp loops per frame
    numFrames: 0                            # Number of frames to record. 0: Infinte framing
    framePeriodicity: 100                   # ms

channel:
    rxChannelEn: 0xF                        # RX Channels enabled
    rxChannelEn: 0x7                        # TX Channel enabled

dataFmt:
    iqSwapSel: 0                            # I first

If the capture directory is not indicated (with the -d option), the capture folder is automatically created as MMW_Capture_<timestamp>; with <timesamp> is placeholder for the Unix timestamp at which the command has been issued.

Self-defined configuration

It's possible to define custom configurations suitable for a given recording setup with TOML config files. Some examples of config files are present on the config folder of this repository.

With a config file, one can use the command below:

mmwave -f <path-to-config-file> --configure --record --time <duration-in-min>

# Example
mmwave -f config/short-range-cfg.toml --configure --record --time 2

Check and copy recorded data

With the MMWCAS-DSP-EVM board, recordings are saved on its embedded Solid State Drive (SSD). To check that the recording has proceeded and is successful, you can log over ssh onto the DSP board as follows:

# Use the IP address of the DSP board
ssh [email protected]

cd /mnt/ssd

ls -l

In the list of folders, you can then check for the name of the folder holding the recorded data and make sure that it contains some data.

To copy the files over Ethernet, one can use a secure copy program such as scp.

scp [email protected]:/mnt/ssd/<recording-directory> <path-to-local-storage>

# Example
scp [email protected]:/mnt/ssd/outdoor0 /home/user/rwu-radar

Developer note

The structure of the repository is as follows:

.
├── config
│   └── short-range-cfg.toml
├── makefile
├── mimo.c
├── mimo.h
├── mmwave
├── opt
│   ├── opt.c
│   └── opt.h
├── README.md
├── ti
│   ├── ethernet
│   │   ├── docs
│   │   └── src
│   ├── firmware
│   │   ├── masterss
│   │   ├── radarss
│   │   ├── xwr22xx_metaImage.bin
│   │   └── xwr22xx_metaImage.h
│   ├── mmwave
│   │   ├── crc_compute.c
│   │   ├── mmwave.c
│   │   ├── mmwave.h
│   │   ├── rls_osi.c
│   │   └── rls_osi.h
│   └── mmwavelink
│       ├── docs
│       ├── include
│       ├── lib
│       ├── makefile
│       ├── makefiles
│       ├── mmwavelink.h
│       └── src
└── toml
    ├── config.c
    ├── config.h
    ├── toml.c
    └── toml.h

The content of the folders ti/mmwavelink and ti/firmware must not be modified. Those are respectively libraries and firmware provided by Texas Instruments and should not be modified unless one knows what it's all about. Any update to those can be directly obtained from TI or by copying them from the installation folder of mmwave studio and mmwave dfp.

The folders ti/ethernet and ti/mmwave are based on examples source files provided by TI. Since the original sources were only compatible with windows, these have been modified to operate on Linux OS. One can update these modules to extend the capabilities of this driver.

• The folder opt holds the source handling the CLI option parsing
• The toml folder handles the parsing of configuration files.
• The entry point of the program is in the mimo.c file.

NOTE: the files toml/toml.c and toml/toml.h have been authored by cktan and released with an MIT license on Github at https://github.com/cktan/tomlc99. Therefore, this reference is the perfect place to seek for new updates of the TOML parser library.