This I was doing research into what components we need in order to get meaningful data from the antenna’s. In our weekly meeting it was brought to our attention that there was likely additional circuitry needed in between the antenna’s and our ADC. Since specific information was not immediately available to us about this I did some research in order to try and figure this out.
During this research one thing I found out is that we will likely need to use an amplifier to boost the signal. I was not aware that RF signals were as low power as they are so in order to avoid noise and get a higher Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) we will need to use an amplifier, this will also amplify noise, however it should be to a lesser effect. I also found that some circuits make use of a bandpass filter in order to help get rid of some of this noise and smooth the signal, this is something I will keep in mind as we start to design our circuit.
I was unable to find too much more detail however I will keep looking and earlier in the week we reached out to a graduate student at CMU doing similar research and hopefully they will be able to give some additional insight into some of the challenges.
This next week I will continue to search for circuitry related to antenna’s and will continue doing research so that we can get started on the design of our PCB as soon as possible, since we will not only have to create the PCB but also wait for it to be fabricated and shipped, and then also wait for the components that will be going on it to be shipped as well. In order to minimize the impact of this delay I will try and make sure we can order both parts and the PCB as soon as possible.