This week we spent more time narrowing our project design and metrics since the design presentation will be due close to the time this post is up. This week we were able to create our proposed antenna design by settling on WiFi signals as our target signal, the number of antennas, and their array pattern. We were able to decide on the antenna spacing for the array based on the WiFi frequency since we wanted to not only avoid aliasing but losing important signal information.
We have found a beamforming algorithm that we will try to implement and test in MATLAB before having to customize it for the FPGA. Since we have settled on an MPSoC FPGA to use, it will make this process of designing easier. We have also started brainstorming a way to configure the heatmap which is our final output. This will be an agreement between the data output type of the FPGA (which we hope to be pixel values that represent intensity) which will be fed to a microcontroller which will handle composing a heatmap onto the live feed of the camera we will be using.
We are currently on track with our project but should order and start building soon to start doing prelim testing with the PCB so we can start interfacing with the hardware/software.