24 GHz Radar Sensor Reference Design

Want to build a radar system without being an expert? This 24 GHz design helps detect objects, track movement, and measure speed in minutes. Curious?

The Demorad platform is a 24 GHz radar sensor reference design from Analog Devices (ADI) designed for quick deployment, featuring ready-to-use software examples and a simple setup process that gets the radar running in minutes. It enables rapid product prototyping for R&D applications, allowing users to explore radar technology and develop sensor-based solutions for detecting objects, tracking movement, measuring angular position, velocity, and range. Applications of the design include traffic monitoring, car parking, UAV/drone collision avoidance, altimeters, and security systems.

The reference design is suitable for engineers, researchers, and developers working on radar-based applications. It is particularly useful for those in R&D, product prototyping, and system integration who want to explore radar technology without deep expertise in RF microwave and signal processing. Companies developing solutions for traffic monitoring, car parking, UAV/drone navigation, altimeters, and security systems can benefit from its rapid deployment capabilities. Academic institutions and research labs can also use Demorad for radar experiments and algorithm development, leveraging its complete RF and DSP processing chain with software support for data analysis.

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Demorad includes both hardware and software, streamlining the evaluation and development of 24 GHz radar without requiring expertise in RF microwave and signal processing. This significantly reduces development time and technical complexity during product design.

The platform offers a complete RF and analog signal chain with DSP processing, providing an RF-to-bits solution. This allows users to work with raw data and conduct radar experiments using advanced hardware with minimal setup time.

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Full software support includes a graphical user interface (GUI) for 24 GHz radar ICs, DSP radar function libraries, and the ability to export raw data for post-processing on a PC using Matlab tools.

The Demorad features ADI’s 24 GHz multichannel radar solution. Its sensor is built on a single PCB with 2 transmitters and 4 receivers on the front, connected to a 24 GHz RF chipset, ADCs, and DSP on the reverse side. This serves as a reference design for product development.

Using FMCW radar, Demorad detects object range and velocity up to 200 m with a resolution of about 75 cm. Its field of view is approximately 120° in azimuth and 15° in elevation. By leveraging digital beamforming (DBF), it calculates angular information within the FOV.

Some of the key features of the Demorad  reference design include:

• Analog Devices’ 24 GHz chipset
• Up to 4 analog receiver channels and MIMO
• Raw data sampling and digital post-processing
• Standardized command interface, GUI
• Real-time signal processing on Blackfin DSP for post-processing
• USB 2.0 interface for communication
• Data rates up to 1.2 MSPS per IF channel, MIMO processing

ADI has tested this reference design. It comes with a bill of materials (BOM), schematics, assembly drawing, printed circuit board (PCB) layout, and more. The company’s website has additional data about the reference design. To read more about this reference design, click here.