Recently in this online news service we reviewed the Walabot, a DIY radar to run on your smartphone. Now, Frankfurt-based Silicon Radar introduce their development kits for gigahertz CMOS radar MMICs (millimetre wave integrated circuits), which are built using SiGe or SiGe:C from IHP. On the way to developing ways to mass produce silicon mm-Wave SoCs at low cost, Silicon Radar were joined by big guns like STMicro, IHP, Evatronix, Selmic, Hightec, Bosch, the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and the University of Toronto.

The EasyRadar dev kit allows all of Silicon Radar’s TX/RX radar chips to be evaluated “by beginners and pros who want to start development and tweak system parameters” like programmable FMCW parameters; signal processing; target recognition; web-based GUI; USB or wireless LAN; and communication with the PC. The kit includes: 122-GHz radar front end; 24-GHz radar front end, controller board, baseband board with Wi-Fi; and a lens for 122 GHz.

SimpleRadar is available to evaluate the firm’s 122 GHz radar front end separately. It has the same functionality as the EasyRadar but is smaller (40 x 40mm), and can be used as a Wi-Fi-enabled radar sensor with integrated target recognition.