Determining Constraints:
This week, I focused on pinning down some of the specifications for our beamformer design. I began by working with Enock and Txanton to identify a specific use case for our project, and we settled on detecting hidden devices within a standard room. From this use case, we derived several constraints specific to our operational context: the size of a “typical” room was sourced from a report by NIST (see slides for reference); and the typical device size which we aim to detect was sourced from statista (reference in slides).
Establishing Main Lobe Width:
With these constraints fixed, I performed some simple calculations involving the minimum separation between devices within the space of our average room from which the main lobe width of our beamformer was ascertained. The main lobe width can be thought of as how much of our device’s field of view can be seen clearly at one time; the narrower the main lobe width, the smaller the portion of room we can see at once (meaning we have to look at more spots within the room), but the more accurate our results will be — a tradeoff between processing time and accuracy.
Progress Since Last Week:
I have addressed many of the uncertainties in our beamformer design since last week, largely due to the guidance of this paper, https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/439/3/3180/1113793, which details the implementation of a beamformer architecture that we will follow closely. These specifications have addressed the points that we outlined in last week’s progress report.
Plans for Next Week:
Per our proposed schedule (see slides), this next week will involve the critical first steps in two of our project divisions: antenna design and signal processing pipeline implementation. On the antenna design side, we hope to finalize the configuration of our antenna array, as well as pin down the type and brand of antenna that we will use. On the signal processing pipeline side, we will finalize our beamformer algorithm which we are in the final stages of adapting from the aforementioned paper.