Construction of an ultrasound pulse RADAR on the labVIEW ELVIS platform

Abstract

The purpose of this project is to design and build an ultrasound pulse radar system using LabVIEW programming. The NI ELVIS II board is also used together with LabVIEW. SRF05 ultrasonic sensor is used as the main sensor module and the transmitter and receiver of sensor are programmed by LabVIEW through NI ELVIS II board. The prototype system is designed to perform object range detection and produce a radar plan position indicator (PPI) display on the LabVIEW front panel. The object range is calculated from the return echo signal and the result is shown in numerical value and also displayed in radar PPI on the LabVIEW front panel. The hardware model of radar is constructed with SRF05 ultrasonic sensor, the servo motor and the slip ring connector. In order to get the 360 view of rotation, a continuous rotation servo motor is attached to the ultrasonic sensor. Due to the reason that the motor needs to rotate continuously, it is impossible to connect the sensor directly to the ELVIS board. Therefore, I used the slip ring connector to make connections between sensor and ELVIS II board. The whole hardware set up is designed to be as efficient as possible even though there are still some constraints. The details of setting up the hardware and LabVIEW source code are included in the later part of the report. The prototype, as a whole, performs basic radar functions such as object detection and displaying the detected objects on PPI screen. This project is intended for illustration purpose of engineering students to demonstrate basic features of radar by using ultrasonic sensor.