My accomplishments this week:
- Investigated VNA technology for characterizing our antennae. Got reasonable (sub 2) VSWR measurements for our 2.4GHz antennae, but it is looking increasingly unlikely that we’ll be able to get directional gain measurements for our antennae. To do this, we’d need access to the anechoic chamber in REH, as well as RF signal generators. Prof. Mukherjee has been helpful in getting us access to a VNA, but it’s utility is limited to us without the other aforementioned pieces. Furthermore, the given VNA does not include 50Ohm calibration kits, so any numbers we get out of it are possibly bogus. Also, the VNA failed to pick up FM-band signals with what should have been an adequate antenna, so I’m a bit skeptical on its utility for our use case.
- Rev. 1 Review suggestions implemented and board put in for ordering. Changes made this week to the layout were largely thermal-oriented improvements, like increasing trace widths, embiggening power pours, adding via stitching, etc.
My personal deliverables for next week
- Status on getting caught up-to-speed with the state of firmware development (ft. Stan and Cameron) while waiting for the board and BOM to arrive. Sorry I didn’t get this done this past week, my bad.
Updates on last week’s deliverables:
- Firmware still not reviewed adequately, been reviewing other CMR firmware changes
- Board submitted for ordering