4007 Project Idea: Passive Radar
I have about $100K worth of hardware on the 5th floor of Van Leer, dying
for a group of clever 4007 students to do something cool with it. The idea
is to track air traffic in the Atlanta area by using some existing
transmissions, such as FM radio or television, as the illuminating source
for the radar instead of a dedicated transmitter.
This project would be different than most in that the available hardware
is largely predetermined. It was purchased under a large equipment grant; most
individual components are quite expensive and vastly
beyond the budget a regular 4007 project.
Figuring out what the best thing to do
with all that hardware and getting
it all to cooperate nicely, however, will be quite a challenge. The hardware
was selected to be like legos, in that it can be rearranged all sorts of
different ways.
An ideal team for this project should have at
least one person who is skilled at DSP theory, and at least one person who is
good at C programming, and hopefully at least one person who knows things
about RF systems.
Read my report on the hardware and what sort of things you can do with it:
DURIP: Integrating Sensing and
Computation for Passive Cover Radar, Signals Intelligence, and Other
Applications Driven by Moore’s Law. If this sounds interesting, let me
know and I can point you to many, many references on
passive
radar. (Oh look! My name is on a wikipedia page!)