1 System Description

The TIDEP-0090 provides a reference for creating a traffic monitoring application using TI’s mmWave radio-frequency complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (RF-CMOS) technology. The reference design provides test results and examples using the IWR1642BOOST EVM. The design has been further extended to enable traffic monitoring applications on IWR6843 and IWR1843 devices with the additional capability of 3D detection and tracking.

mmWave sensing technology detects vehicles, such as cars, motorcycles, and bicycles, at extended ranges regardless of environmental conditions, such as rain, fog, or dust. TI’s mmWave sensing devices integrate a 4 GHz bandwidth mmWave radar front end with ARM® microcontroller (MCU) and TI DSP cores for single-chip systems.

This traffic monitoring reference design has several design goals to demonstrate the suitability of the mmWave sensors for traffic monitoring applications. This design targets the implementation of a wide, azimuth field of view (±50°), intermediate range (70 m) sensor configuration, which can detect small cars across four lanes and track their position and velocity as they approach the intersection and the stop bar.

This design guide implements algorithms for radar signal processing, detection, and tracking for an IWR1642 device on a TI EVM module. The design provides a list of required hardware, schematics, and foundational software to quickly begin traffic monitoring product development.

This reference design describes the example use case as well as the design principle, implementation details, and engineering tradeoffs made in the development of this application. High-level instructions for replicating the design are provided.