Re: RADAR project

By functional modules, I means things like power dividers/splitters, mixers, terminators, directional couplers, attenuators, gain blocks, IF filters, antennas, power amps, VCO|TCXO|OCXO|DRO, delay lines, circulators, isolators, etc. Mostly, the stuff made by MCL. For example, here's a 76GHz ham radio beacon transmitter made from such modules:

Or, one might become a compulsive hoarder like me and maintain a junk box full of microwave goodies to cannibalize: There are about 5 similar boxes with more RF and microwave stuff.

--
Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com 
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com 
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558

now I know why the massive gap

FWIW I think in many generations time we'll see large numbers of varied cor es, with each chunk of code sent to whichever one can do it fast enough wit h least power dissipation. Calc.exe might run on a modernised 4004 core, no need to waste a whole pile of extra gates & switching events.

NT

My impression is that the police in MA rarely even bother using speed guns day-to-day, the posted limit is 65, the de-facto limit on state highways is 75 (you're going to get run over unless you're going at least that fast), and traffic density is so high that anyone who's doing

85 or 90 is going to be someone street racing or weaving and breaking a bunch of other traffic laws, too.

Visual estimate is fine in MA for a conviction and 99% of defendants who show up to court don't have a well-prepared defense, anyway

The traffic density is so high that any attempt to pull people over for speeding is a greater danger than the speeders. A traffic stop would likely bollix up traffic for the rest of the day. The fast drivers aren't the danger.

That's universal.

Wouldn't they normally take the offender to an exit or gas station/rest area to handle things there? It would be very unusual here to stop a car on the emergency lane because that is very dangerous, no matter if the traffic density is high or low at the time.

No. There are no gas stations on limited access highways ("Interstates") and there are very few rest areas (every 40-50 miles).

There is no other place. That's the way it's done.

Here, when there is some reason to take people off the highway, the "trap" would be setup at a suitable location where sufficient exits or other areas are available to do it safely. Of course, exits are much closer here than in the US.

In most cases here it is not required at all to stop the vehicle, the observation is done and preferably documented with a photo, and the fine can be sent using the license plate registration database.

Stopping on the emergency lane is extremely dangerous. One always has to watch for people drifting off course (mostly truckers). Well, onboard camera fragments of US police cars stopping someone on the emergency lane and then getting completely smashed up by someone driving into them are widely available. When that would happen here, the police would be in serious trouble. (here, a policeman can be brought to trial for doing unsafe things or causing bodily harm to a citizen, even during an arrest)

So if you loan your car to a friend and he speeds through a trap, you get the ticket? That's nice.

Shit happens. It's quite rare but it does happen.

And people think the US courts have gotten ridiculous.

Yes. Even when you rent or lease a car to someone, you get the ticket. But of course in that case you make sure you put in the contract that the driver will ultimately pay the fine. Similarly, when you drive a friend's car it would be normal to pay any tickets he gets. And, I should say, it is not very customary to loan cars here.

Do you think it is reasonable to put someone's life in danger for the purpose of writing a speed ticket and handing it to him in person?

I'm not so sure if it is better to have riots in the streets after questionable police behaviour...

I guess that's not the stupidest thing you do.

Not for speeding, no. It's rare that they do on crowded limited access highways, too. The normal speed shows it (no one pay attention to the posted speed limits).

Cite.

On Jan 22, 2018, Neon John wrote (in article):

Well, I?ve gleaned enough information to make some suggestions.

It sounds like you might wish to explore a chirp radar architecture for long-range detection. This can be implemented using digital signal generation for TX and RX local oscillators and DSPs to handle the signal processing (fast part only).

A big advantage of chirp radars is that one can use long pulses to achieve long range, compressing the chirps to yield far better slant range resolution than the pulsewidth would allow. Factors of 100 are easy. The disadvantage of the long pulse is that the minimum range is larger; this is solved by useing a mixture of short and long chirps.

Another advantage of this is that one gets a spectrum of speeds and amplitudes versus slant range, so the software can sort targets out, and can reject stationary objects. This is how the majority of the big military radars work, and only now is it becoming practical for a home-brew solution.

Joe Gwinn