White RHINO: a low-cost communications radar hardware platform

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dc.contributor.advisorMishra, Amiten_ZA
dc.contributor.authorHazarika, Ojonaven_ZA
dc.date.accessioned2014-11-05T03:35:31Z
dc.date.available2014-11-05T03:35:31Z
dc.date.issued2014en_ZA
dc.descriptionIncludes bibliographical referencesen_ZA
dc.description.abstractThe Electromagnetic spectrum has always been a very expensive resource and hence, has not been accessible to everyone. Yet, it is under-utilized. The new Whitespace Technology standards provide an efficient way to use the spectrum. However, the concept of shared spectrum introduced by the Whitespace Technology promises to reduce the cost of accessing the spectrum by a huge margin. Also, because the standards utilize the television channels, the VHF and UHF frequencies facilitate wireless transmission over large distances. This has provided impetus to various application developers. Using Whitespace Technology for Communications Radar is one such novel application which has great benefits for the African scenario. Here, the population is scattered and infrastructure for navigation and tracking is inadequate. But, there is a shortage of low-cost commercially available hardware platforms tailored for the application. In order to boost Whitespace-based Communications Radar application development, the White RHINO(Reconfigurable Hardware Interface for computation and radio) hardware platform was developed. It aims to fill the gap of low-cost commercial hardware platforms available for Whitespace-based Communications Radar. Being a Communications Radar platform, the White RHINO had to be designed keeping the standards and regulating body norms as yardsticks. However, an achievable radar performance of the platform under various scenarios was also estimated. The White RHINO contains an FPGA (the Zynq7000 series) which has dual embedded ARM processing cores. For the wireless interface, it contains a field programmable RF transceiver and an RF frontend section. The platform contains wired networking capability of 2 Gbps. The platform also has 512 MB DDR3 and 128 Mbit NAND ash as onboard memory. Finally, it has USB host, SDIO and JTAG for programmability and temperature sensors for system monitoring. The manufactured boards were tested under lab environment. It was found that except a failure on the RF transceiver section (due to a PCB footprint error), other interfaces were functional. The White RHINO successfully runs both U-Boot and Linux as operating systems. The error and other minor bugs have been corrected for the next fabrication run. Also, the cost of the complete White RHINO system is less than 1000 USD which makes it a very powerful platform and yet, less expensive than most of the commercially available platforms designed for similar applications.en_ZA
dc.identifier.apacitationHazarika, O. (2014). <i>White RHINO: a low-cost communications radar hardware platform</i>. (Thesis). University of Cape Town ,Faculty of Engineering & the Built Environment ,Department of Electrical Engineering. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/11427/9086en_ZA
dc.identifier.chicagocitationHazarika, Ojonav. <i>"White RHINO: a low-cost communications radar hardware platform."</i> Thesis., University of Cape Town ,Faculty of Engineering & the Built Environment ,Department of Electrical Engineering, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/9086en_ZA
dc.identifier.citationHazarika, O. 2014. White RHINO: a low-cost communications radar hardware platform. University of Cape Town.en_ZA
dc.identifier.ris TY - Thesis / Dissertation AU - Hazarika, Ojonav AB - The Electromagnetic spectrum has always been a very expensive resource and hence, has not been accessible to everyone. Yet, it is under-utilized. The new Whitespace Technology standards provide an efficient way to use the spectrum. However, the concept of shared spectrum introduced by the Whitespace Technology promises to reduce the cost of accessing the spectrum by a huge margin. Also, because the standards utilize the television channels, the VHF and UHF frequencies facilitate wireless transmission over large distances. This has provided impetus to various application developers. Using Whitespace Technology for Communications Radar is one such novel application which has great benefits for the African scenario. Here, the population is scattered and infrastructure for navigation and tracking is inadequate. But, there is a shortage of low-cost commercially available hardware platforms tailored for the application. In order to boost Whitespace-based Communications Radar application development, the White RHINO(Reconfigurable Hardware Interface for computation and radio) hardware platform was developed. It aims to fill the gap of low-cost commercial hardware platforms available for Whitespace-based Communications Radar. Being a Communications Radar platform, the White RHINO had to be designed keeping the standards and regulating body norms as yardsticks. However, an achievable radar performance of the platform under various scenarios was also estimated. The White RHINO contains an FPGA (the Zynq7000 series) which has dual embedded ARM processing cores. For the wireless interface, it contains a field programmable RF transceiver and an RF frontend section. The platform contains wired networking capability of 2 Gbps. The platform also has 512 MB DDR3 and 128 Mbit NAND ash as onboard memory. Finally, it has USB host, SDIO and JTAG for programmability and temperature sensors for system monitoring. The manufactured boards were tested under lab environment. It was found that except a failure on the RF transceiver section (due to a PCB footprint error), other interfaces were functional. The White RHINO successfully runs both U-Boot and Linux as operating systems. The error and other minor bugs have been corrected for the next fabrication run. Also, the cost of the complete White RHINO system is less than 1000 USD which makes it a very powerful platform and yet, less expensive than most of the commercially available platforms designed for similar applications. DA - 2014 DB - OpenUCT DP - University of Cape Town LK - https://open.uct.ac.za PB - University of Cape Town PY - 2014 T1 - White RHINO: a low-cost communications radar hardware platform TI - White RHINO: a low-cost communications radar hardware platform UR - http://hdl.handle.net/11427/9086 ER - en_ZA
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/11427/9086
dc.identifier.vancouvercitationHazarika O. White RHINO: a low-cost communications radar hardware platform. [Thesis]. University of Cape Town ,Faculty of Engineering & the Built Environment ,Department of Electrical Engineering, 2014 [cited yyyy month dd]. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/11427/9086en_ZA
dc.language.isoengen_ZA
dc.publisher.departmentDepartment of Electrical Engineeringen_ZA
dc.publisher.facultyFaculty of Engineering and the Built Environment
dc.publisher.institutionUniversity of Cape Town
dc.titleWhite RHINO: a low-cost communications radar hardware platformen_ZA
dc.typeMaster Thesis
dc.type.qualificationlevelMasters
dc.type.qualificationnameMScen_ZA
uct.type.filetypeText
uct.type.filetypeImage
uct.type.publicationResearchen_ZA
uct.type.resourceThesisen_ZA
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