D3 Engineering, a Texas Instruments platinum design partner, announced their DesignCore RS-1843A mmWave Radar Sensor Evaluation Kit. The DesignCore Evaluation Kit enables the implementation of many different mmWave radar sensing algorithms to measure, detect, and track. 

The production-intent kit features a single board, small form factor, and a USB-Serial interface. The USB-serial interface may be used with a PC or embedded platform to facilitate field testing, sensor evaluation, algorithm development, and application demonstrations. 

Industrial applications supported by this kit include robotics, autonomous machines, industrial vehicle systems, tracking, and facility monitoring. Automotive applications include driver assistance, automated emergency braking, and corner radar. The kit can also be used in other use cases as a stand-alone mmWave radar sensor. 

The DesignCore Evaluation Kit features the TI AWR1843, a single-chip 76-GHz to 81-GHz automotive radar sensor integrating a DSP, an MCU, and radar accelerator. The AWR1843 RF front end integrates a PLL, three transmitters, four receivers, and a baseband ADC.  It covers 76 to 81 GHz with bandwidths up to 4 GHz.  It features 12 dBm transmit power and noise figure 15 dB or better across the band. The processing cores in the AWR1843 include a C674x DSP for FMCW signal processing, a hardware accelerator for radar cube processing, and a Cortex-R4F microcontroller for object tracking, classification, and communications. 

The DesignCore Evaluation Kit features a high-density connector for mating with optional baseboards providing additional interfaces and functionality, including access to the raw baseband ADC data samples. Also provided on this interface are CAN-FD, I2C, SPI, GPIO, and UART connections. The main interface is a USB-C connector which can act as a power supply input as well as enumerating two serial UARTS, one for console and the other for processed radar returns or other algorithm output. 

The DesignCore Evaluation Kit includes custom firmware ensuring board support for the latest version of the SDK from TI. 

The DesignCore RS-1843A mmWave Radar Sensor Evaluation Kit is $499 and available for order online at: www.D3engineering.com.