Lime Mini Radar

An interesting application for the Lime Mini is using it as a radar. The Lime Mini has enough timing capabilities and precision to be a radar, but enough problems to not be a great radar. Still it is interesting and a good learning opportunity.

Warning

The Lime Mini does not make a good radar. It can detect large radar targets (such as a corner reflector or cars) at short distances.

The radar will need soapySDR with the Limesuite module to function. See the tutorial on installing SoapySDR and the Limesuite module: Lime Mini.

Using the Code

The code for running the radar is found in the repository in the examples folder under limeRadar. For convenience it is also posted below. The runner.sh script will automatically run the radar code and the data plotter. It should be setup and verified beforehand.

Below is the shell script.

# This script compiles, executes, and plots the results of limeRadar.c

CODE_FILE="limeRadar.c"
EXE_FILE="limeRadar.out"
PLOTTING_FILE="dataPlotter5.py"
LIB_DIR="/usr/local/lib"

RED='\033[0;31m'    # Red
YEL='\033[0;33m'    # Yellow
BLU='\033[0;34m'    # Blue
NC='\033[0m'        # No Color

echo $YEL[RUNNER] Compiling $CODE_FILE ...$NC
gcc -std=c99 $CODE_FILE -lSoapySDR -lm -Ofast -o $EXE_FILE -L $LIB_DIR

echo $YEL[RUNNER] Executing $EXE_FILE ...$NC
./$EXE_FILE

echo $YEL[RUNNER] Plotting with $PLOTTING_FILE ...$NC
python3 $PLOTTING_FILE

-L $LIB_DIR

is where the soapySDR library is installed. The -L command passes a specific location to search in. It is configured through the LIB_DIR variable. It may not be necessary to include.

EXE_FILE

is the file the compiler outputs.

CODE_FILE

the name of the radar file.

PLOTTING_FILE

the name of the data plotter file.